Help! I can't even comprehend such numbers: Deficit of $1.4 Trillion Limits Democrats

From The Wall Street Journal:

The Treasury said the U.S. ran its biggest budget deficit since World War II, a record that promises to complicate Democrats' efforts to enact their agenda.

The Treasury Department reported that the deficit for the 2009 fiscal year ended Sept. 30 came in at about $1.4 trillion, or about 10% of the U.S.'s gross domestic product.

From health care to economic recovery to the Afghanistan war, the government's gloomy fiscal condition is constraining Democrats. Deficits also are looming large as a political issue in the 2010 campaign, as voters fret about the long-term consequences of mounting debt.

"I don't think I've seen this level of concern since 1992, when Ross Perot said we need to look under the hood and fix the engine," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said in an interview Friday. "Government, individuals and businesses are all looking at their debt loads and recalculating."
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See also article in The New York Times and in The Washington Post, the latter noting:

And Obama's current policies would drive the budget gap into the trillion-dollar range for much of the next decade.

Congress is enmeshed in a deeply partisan battle over Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's health-care system, which would add billions of dollars to the federal budget, if not future deficits. Democrats also are considering extending safety-net programs for the unemployed, funding new job-creation strategies to combat a 9.8 percent unemployment rate and cutting seniors another round of $250 checks to make up for the government's decision to withhold cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients. Meanwhile, Obama has said he wants to extend an array of expensive tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration that are set to expire next year. And Senate leaders hope to vote next week on a plan to block scheduled pay cuts for doctors who treat Medicare patients, a move that would add nearly $250 billion to deficits over the next 10 years.