Most of the time, that would be a bad year.

But this is just two months, which means we may be at a trillion dollars before we know it.

President Bush will leave town with a record overall deficit. Barack Obama says he will go "line by line" through the federal budget for cuts.

I would like to believe him, but I'm going to leave my hat on that says "CYNIC" on that one.

The problem is that going after pork barrel spending isn't the answer. Going after spending at say, the Education Department or the Commerce Department isn't the answer.

Yes, you can save some here and there, and it mounts up to real money.

But if you want to solve the current budget debacle, you have to do two things. You must reform Social Security and you must deal with Medicare and Medicaid spending.

Entitlement reform is what it is called.

No one wants to do, and all the while, that spending is on auto-pilot.

Each year, it goes up, up, up, without a vote of the Congress.

Let's just imagine that the yearly federal deficit comes to $1 trillion.

You could cut out the entire Pentagon budget and you would basically be about halfway there.

Then you can find all kinds of programs in what's known as non-defense discretionary spending - basically anything other than the military and intelligence.

And you would still have a hard time balancing the budget.

In the first four years of President Bush's time in office, non-defense discretionary grew twice as fast under the Bush Administration than under the Clinton Administration.

That was a finding of the Heritage Foundation, not exactly a left wing loony asylum.

The Bush White House refused to continue spending curbs that were put in place by the GOP Congress and President Clinton. So spending went up with the GOP in charge of the White House and Congress.

And most people expect spending will go up some more with a Democrat there, too.

And all the while, the deficit goes up. Someday, we will have to pay that bill of over $10 trillion.