Yikes.

(OTM) — The federal government spent $134 billion more in the month of August than it brought in, as the deficit for the year rose to $1.23 trillion, the Treasury Department reported Tuesday.

The new numbers put even more pressure on what is already a high-stakes decision for the group of 12 lawmakers on Congress’s supercommittee. The bipartisan panel, created by the August debt-limit deal, is charged with finding at least $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts by Thanksgiving.

The government came up short by $44 billion, or 48 percent, than it did at the same time last year, when the August deficit was just $90.5 billion.

With one month left to go in the fiscal year, the deficit has already cleared $1 trillion for the third straight year, and is on pace to approximately meet fiscal 2010’s deficit of $1.29 trillion.

The bleak new numbers came on the same day the supercommittee held its first substantive hearing. There, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf did not offer much immediate relief, telling lawmakers that in order to protect the fledgling economic recovery, the deficit will likely need to get worse in the short term before tightening later in the decade.