As Washington comes to grips with the economic reality of the Treasury’s $700 billion rescue package, political experts said it’s only a matter of time before both presidential campaigns have to come to grips with it as well.

While historically no presidential candidate has made good on every promise he made on the campaign trail, this election cycle is starting to make both candidates' election promises seem more like fiscal dreams.

According to recent Congressional Budget Office estimates, the current fiscal 2009 budget deficit is expected to reach $438 billion. If the U.S. government adds the entire $700 billion plan on top of that, the year’s deficit could reach more than $1.14 trillion.

“The budget situation is looking really, really bleak,” said Len Burman, a tax policy expert with the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “But you’re not going to hear that from the campaigns.”

According to the Tax Policy Center, Sen. Barack Obama's plan to cut taxes for families making roughly $250,000 or less a year would reduce federal government tax revenues by an estimated $2.9 trillion over the next 10 years. Sen. John McCain's plan, which will extend the Bush tax cuts plus some additional measures, would reduce tax revenues by an estimated $4.2 trillion over the next 10 years.

Both McCain and Obama said they plan to accomplish their presidential campaign promises of tax cuts, energy independence and health care reform if elected. What they are not answering is “when.”

On NBC's Today Show on Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama said he may have to “phase in” some of his promises like a middle-class tax cut or health care instead of passing them in his first 100 days in office.

“A lot of it is going to depend on what our tax revenues look like,” Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer on Tuesday.

McCain said at a Tuesday press conference he would still fight for his tax-cut proposal -- saying that tax cuts are the easiest way to stimulate an economy in tough times. In order to pay for it, he would advocate for "spending constraints."

Either way, Burman said both candidates' tax plans could be adding pressure to an already weighed-down budget - including pushing $9.7 trillion national deficit even higher.

While both Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson believe that the $700 billion will not be spent all at once and there is a likelihood that the government could recoup some of the money, things could go wrong really quickly.

“There’s a huge risk that if this bailout isn’t done right, the budget implications are going to be pretty large,” said Andrew Jakabovics, an economic policy expert with the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “We just don’t know what the economy and tax revenues are going to look like on Jan. 20.”

Jakabovics and other political experts said that both campaigns need to acknowledge, at least internally, that next year isn’t going to be a time for big changes to government. 

David Leblang, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia, took the worries a step further.

“These candidates risk looking like fools unless they start talking publicly about the implications of adding $700 billion to the federal budget combined with their campaign promises,” LeBlang said.

But reality doesn’t bring votes, LeBlang and Burman said. If Obama or McCain came out and said something along the lines of “we cannot afford a few things I have said for the past year,” they risk looking ineffectual or worse, liars.

So, they keep up appearances.

A good example was during the 1992 presidential election, when then-Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton made promises of health-care reform and balancing the budget. This was while the U.S. economy was in a recession.

Once he went into office, those promises soon became long-term goals.

“Clinton got the budget balanced in his second term and health care just had too much economic and political opposition,” LeBlang said. "You try for what you can."

From the other party, President George W. Bush promised in 2004 to use his “political capital” to reform Social Security -- and that hasn’t worked out either.

“The public should remember that, historically, a presidential campaign is not a good time to look for great policy making,” Burman said.