Wall Street's reaction to the budget: Yawn!

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The federal budget is here. Because nothing is more romantic than sifting through a 216-page PDF full of numbers on Valentine's Day!

The White House's proposed 2012 budget is a doozy. There are a litany of deep cuts to various government programs in there in order to try and get the nation's unwieldy debt load under control.

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Some are viewing the budget as the most concrete sign yet that politicians finally realize something drastic has to be done to get federal spending in check. Others argue that the budget isn't austere enough.

But the reaction to the budget on Wall Street was unanimous. It was a relative non-event.

Stocks were little changed (and mixed) in early afternoon trading Monday while bonds, which you'd expect to move a bit more on any news related to the deficit, were mostly flat. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note dipped slightly to about 3.62%.

It looks as if many investors were simply unwilling to pull a Charles Grodin from "Dave" and meticulously analyze the budget line-by-line.

For the most part, investors in both stocks and bonds appeared to think that the budget is a nice start on the road to fiscal responsibility. But the final budget may bear little resemblance to what was proposed Monday.

"Investors are not taking anything about the budget seriously," said Peter Sorrentino, senior portfolio manager with Huntington Financial Advisors in Cincinnati

"Yes, the size of the budget is a bit breathtaking and it's especially something for bond investors to worry more about. But this is the early act in a very long play," Sorrentino said.

Many market strategists said investors are still a bit wary about how drastic the cuts in spending will wind up being.

So the lack of a big move (positive or negative) shows that people are still trying to make up their minds about whether the long-term benefits of steep cuts are worth it.

"There is a greater need to rein in spending. But it's a balancing act," said James Barnes, senior fixed income portfolio manager with National Penn Investors Trust Company in Reading, Pa.

"The economy is not 100% out of the woods from the recession. The last thing you want to do is prevent the recovery from fully playing itself out," Barnes added.

Sure, you could look at the recent spike in long-term bond yields as a sign that investors are worried about how the growing debt problem will feed inflation down the road.

But with rates still at relatively low levels, Barnes said the increase in yields is more a recognition of improving economic conditions in the U.S. and around the globe.

Still, investors can't completely ignore what's going on in Capitol Hill. Congress will soon have to make an important decision before the budget even comes to the floor of the House and Senate.

Mike O'Rouke, chief market strategist with BTIG, an institutional brokerage firm in New York, said that he's hopeful some action will be taken regarding the debt ceiling in early March. The U.S. is projected to pass its legal borrowing limit by the middle of spring unless Congress agrees to boost it.

O'Rourke said Washington should not take such a rigid approach to the debt problem that it risks making the still fragile economy even worse than it already is.

"If you have excess and waste in the system, spending cuts are obviously a healthy thing. But the question is what type of short-term pain can be endured. Investors just want to see things on the right path," he said.

Nonetheless, investors seemed to be heartened by the fact that no major tax hikes were proposed in the budget. That was viewed as further evidence that President Obama is taking a more centrist approach.

At this point, investors simply want to see action and not more gridlock, several experts said.

"Whether you like the budget or not, the final bill is not going to look much like what was presented today," said Tom Stringfellow, president of Frost Investment Advisors in San Antonio.

"In a worst case scenario, the budget gets deadlocked and nothing improves. But you hope that rational thought prevails over political rhetoric," he said.

That may be asking a bit much. The partisan rancor that's built up over a period of several decades is unlikely to evaporate overnight -- no matter how much Democrats and Republicans profess that they've found common ground in tackling the debt.

Many investors may just continue to ignore the political gamesmanship about the budget until there's something more tangible, i.e. an actual bill that's passed and written into law.

"I'm not paying much attention to what's going on inside the Beltway right now and lot of investors I talk to feel the same way," said Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist for Raymond James St. Petersburg, Fla.

"There is hope that the new Congress will do some of the right things but you have to wait and see and watch what they do -- not what they say," Saut said.

-- The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, and Abbott Laboratories, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.