Federal spending reached $1 trillion in fiscal year 1987. Then it took fifteen years for spending to reach $2 trillion in 2002. Then it only took six years to reach $3 trillion in 2008. President Obama’s new midsession budget projections show that it will reach $4 trillion in 2014 and take only four more years to top $5 trillion in 2018. Meanwhile, the Washington establishment is getting all worked up about the deficit effects of extending recent tax cuts, which amount to just a few hundred billion dollars a year.