In recent political events, US spending got hiked about 50% from ~$2T to ~$3T a year (with modest growth associated with inflation and a growing population). Initially this was under the Bush administration and the auspices of bailouts and the like, but the Obama administration has made these increases part of the permanent baseline. The conflict here is whether to hike tax revenues 50% as well, or cut the budget back towards where it was in 2007 or so. Perhaps more Americans would support proposed additional taxes if they thought the additional government spending over the past several years had materially impacted their lives in a positive manner? Economic decisions are made on the margin, after all; it's a question of more taxes or fewer, and not like anyone's seriously calling to disband the fire department (of course, the hype says differently).
(Any spending related to Obamacare once it goes into effect is not even addressed in these figures, so it would be additional.)
More imminently, there is a lot of hype about how a catastrophic "sequester" would end up shutting down the federal government and ending meat inspections and starving social security recipients (Democrat hype) or shutting down the military and starving all our veterans (Republican hype) -- however, even with the automatic sequester, the federal government budget would be larger in 2013 than in 2012; it's only a cut relative to the growth that was previously baked into certain budget assumptions.
Other fun bits: In December the Republicans proposed tax reform which would have raised revenue by keeping rates low but limiting deductions. The Democrats didn't like the plan, they got their way, and ultimately there were tax hikes instead. Besides not fitting with the headline programme of "let's tax the rich!!" a salient reason that the Democrats didn't like this plan is that state income taxes in a lot of high-tax states electing lots of Democrats are also a major source of income-tax deductions. That bit didn't get a lot of press.
(Oh, and the campaign promise that's still on Barack Obama's website? $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in new taxes, to close the deficit? Yeah, the White House has proposed budgets and they don't look anything like spending cuts.)
