Budget deficit this year up to $1.6 trillion

So much for the estimated $9.1 trillion addition to the deficit over 10 years as the Obama administration initially predicted. $1.6 trillion seems pretty bad.

In its budget proposal to be released on Monday, the White House predicts a record $1.6 trillion budget deficit for the fiscal year that ends September 30, the Capitol Hill source said.

According to the estimate, deficits will narrow to $700 billion by fiscal 2013 before gradually rising back to $1.0 trillion by the end of the decade, the source said.

President Barack Obama will seek to strike a balance between reducing the deficit over the long term and stimulating the economy in the short term to ease the pain of double-digit unemployment.

Criticized by Republicans as a big spender, Obama used his State of the Union address last week to tell Americans he would dig the country out of a "massive fiscal hole."

That hole is even deeper than previously believed, according to the estimate by the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

The estimate for the current fiscal year is significantly higher than the $1.35 trillion figure forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last week. . . .

The New York Times writes:

Measured against the size of the economy, a $1.6 trillion shortfall would equal almost 11 percent of the gross domestic product. Economists generally consider annual deficits above 3 percent to be unsustainable. . . .