Stimulus: $1 trillion

The price tag of the Obama stimulus has now reached $1 trillion:

President-elect Barack Obama's economic team is considering an economic-stimulus program that will be far larger than the two-year, half-trillion-dollar plan under consideration two weeks ago, people familiar with the team's thinking tell The Wall Street Journal.
The president-elect is expected to be briefed on the broad parameters of the plan next week, with aides still hoping for Congress to pass a bill by the time Obama takes office Jan.20.
With the unemployment rate now expected to hit 9 percent without aggressive intervention, Obama aides and advisers have set $600 billion over two years as "a very low-end estimate," one person familiar with the matter said. The final number is expected to be significantly higher, possibly between $700 billion and $1 trillion over two years.

Michelle Malkin: "Give me your over/under that it’ll double by the time it gets to the Spreader of Wealth’s desk next month." And it won't work.

UPDATE: Pick a number! Any number!

Christina Romer, who will lead Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, is also surveying economists, trying to build political consensus around a larger number before it is presented to Congress in early January.
People familiar with the discussion say Lawrence Lindsey, President George W. Bush's first NEC director, has counseled $800 billion to $1 trillion in stimulus over two years. Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, a Reagan White House economic adviser, has raised his initial, one-year, $300 billion figure to at least $400 billion.

That's got to be a cool job: Sitting around a table with a bunch of experts, offering multibillion-dollar estimates of how much taxpayer money to flush down the toilet in make-work schemes and welfare giveaways.

UPDATE II: "Remember when $1 trillion was a big number?"