The Wall Street Journal editors have had enough:

President Obama’s 2010 budget looks more astounding by the day, especially when someone other than the White House budget office is analyzing it. The latest case of epic sticker shock came Friday when the Congressional Budget Office published its assessment, which found that the proposals would increase the federal deficit by $2.3 trillion more over 10 years than the White House had claimed.

Hey, what’s a little rounding error among friends?

Mr. Obama keeps saying he has “inherited a trillion dollar deficit,” which is true. But he’s hardly an innocent bystander. CBO shows that the President is seeing that $1 trillion and raising it again and again, as far as the eye can see. In only two months, since the last CBO budget review in January, Democrats have passed laws that increase spending by $134 billion in the last six months of this fiscal year alone, and $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. And that’s all before his 2010 budget proposals.

Lost in the torch and pitchfork display over the AIG bonuses (totaling a whole $165 million, which used to be a lot of money but isn’t anymore) was the administration’s enormous fiscal irresponsibility, which CBO has now clarified for all who are interested. The numbers are staggering:

This year’s deficit will hit 13.1% of GDP and next year’s will still be at 9.6%, assuming a healthy recovery, and then never get below 4.1% for the entire decade. These deficits assume the passage of Mr. Obama’s enormous tax increases in 2011 and $629 billion in new cap-and-tax carbon revenues. The share of debt held by the public will double — to 82.4% in 2019 from 40.8% in 2008.

So the Congress has two choices: enable this leap into fiscal madness, or try to put on the brakes.  As Judd Gregg declared, that the budget may “bankrupt” the country. Aside from inflating our currency there simply is no way to manage a debt as large as what would result from Obama’s budget plan.

The most critical question for Congress is not, then, how much anger to channel or whether Chris Dodd or Tim Geithner is the culprit in the AIG bonus mess. It is whether  they will “slow down this express train to a European welfare state.” On that issue the country’s economic future will turn.