How is this budget different from all other budgets?

(Karen Bleier - AFP/Getty Images) The 2013 budget is out and, as Ezra noted Monday morning, a lot of the big ideas aren’t surprises. In fact, a lot of the big pieces feel awfully familiar. A $1.5 trillion plan for tax increases, investment in infrastructure, adopting the so-called Buffett Rule: The president has endorsed all these changes in previous speeches or legislation.

But there are differences, too, between this Obama budget and previous proposals. Here are three key ones to keep a particularly close watch on:

1. Enter the Budget Control Act. This is the first Obama budget that has to exist under spending caps that Congress agreed to last summer, which aim to reduce federal, discretionary spending by $900 billion over the next decade. That means significantly bigger spending reductions than the White House has proposed in years past for everything from medical research to transportation to education. David Rogers flags the budget from two years prior, which had predicted 2013’s domestic outlays to be $477 billion. In Monday’s budget, the administration assumes it will spend $410 billion, a 14 percent reduction

2. Deficit estimates are up. In September, the administration told Congress that the president’s budget would hold annual deficits under $600 billion. Monday’s budget, however, shows annual deficits above that target for all years except one, 2018. What changed between now and four months ago?

The Office of Budget and Management says it pretty much comes down to two things, the first of which are near-term stimulus measures recently enacted. “The short answer is: temporary measures for near-term economic growth and job creation, like payroll tax relief, [unemployment insurance] and worker programs,” says OMB spokeswoman Meg O’Reilly. She points out that government outlays grew by $192 billion, about 5.3 percent, “in large part because of temporary measures to extend unemployment insurance, support teacher and first-responder jobs, and jump-start school modernization.” The second factor is sluggish economic growth, which O’Reilly says “is slower than we would like.” The two taken together have increased the estimated deficits for the coming decade.

3. In an election year, politics takes center stage. When former Hill budget staffer Stan Collender looks at the 2013 budget, he sees one that does a lot more political positioning than the Obama administration’s previous budget proposals. “I think the big change here is the president is saying, ‘I know the Republicans are going to reject what’s here, so I’m going to do what I want,’” says Collender, now a partner at Qorvis Communications. He points to some of the $8 billion commitment to community colleges that the president rolled out Monday morning in Virginia, among other investments in infrastructure, as the president’s pivot away from a deficit-centric budget. “The polling is showing that the deficit is barely in the top 10 issues voters are thinking about,” says Collender. “So why propose spending cuts that people are going to hate if you know Congress will reject them anyway?”