Michael Scherer has some interesting insight on this debt deal enforcement mechanism that will take a hatchet to the Pentagon budget starting in 2013 unless Congress gets serious about the deficit. Here is his post in a nutshell:
Both Democratic and Republicans leaders have realized that they don’t have enough political heft on their own to cut a deal. So they are pointing a gun to the knee caps of corporate lobbyists for the defense contracting and medical provider communities and saying, “Help us, or else.