The Obama White House will predict tomorrow a $1.6 trillion budget deficit for FY 2010, according to Reuters sources. That number is a record, and represents the largest deficit as a percentage of GDP since the Second World War. It is also significantly higher than the last CBO estimate, which predicted a $1.35 trillion deficit just last week. The new White House budget, also to be released tomorrow, will reportedly project a $1.3 trillion deficit for FY 2011.

And what of the spending freeze?

In his budget, Obama will propose a three-year freeze on some domestic programs to save $20 billion next year and $250 billion over the coming decade.
But that will not be enough to get deficits down permanently to the 3 percent of GDP that most economists consider sustainable.
Deficits are projected to fall as the economy recovers, but they will still average roughly 4.5 percent of GDP over the coming decade, according to the estimate.
Deficits are expected to rise again toward the end of the decade due to the increasing cost of retirement and healthcare programs as the “baby boom” generation retires.
Obama has warned that the burgeoning U.S. debt could unnerve U.S. financial markets, driving up borrowing costs and putting future economic growth at risk.
China, the biggest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries, has urged the United States to get its fiscal house in order.

The deficit projections could get much worse if Obama calls, as he is expected to, for the extension of President Bush’s middle-class tax cuts, set to expire after this year. Indeed, an analysis by Brian Reidl, pricing into the baseline the Bush tax cuts and a number of other probable spending increases, shows a total debt of $13 trillion by 2020, or 98 percent of GDP.