WASHINGTON — A week before taking office, President-elect Barack Obama worked yesterday to ensure that he'll have more than a trillion dollars at his disposal within weeks to shore up the still-sinking economy. He appeared on track to win a quick $350 billion down payment from Congress, with more to come later.

"Thank you, guys," Obama said as he emerged from a closed-door lunch with Senate Democrats at the Capitol, seven days before he'd return there to take the oath of office.

Also yesterday, the Treasury Department reported that the federal government already has run up a record deficit of $485.2 billion in just the first three months of the current budget year.

Economists say the imbalance for the full year could easily top $1 trillion. All the red ink comes from the massive spending out of the financial rescue program — $247 billion out of $700 billion spent so far — and a prolonged recession that has depressed tax revenues.

The report noted that the deficit for December totaled $83.6 billion, a sharp deterioration from a year ago when the government managed a surplus of $48.3 billion. The overall deficit from October through December is the highest on record for a first quarter and surpasses the mark for a full budget year of $454.8 billion set last year.

Slightly more encouraging was a Commerce Department report that the trade deficit declined sharply to $40.4 billion in November, the smallest imbalance in five years as the recession slashed demand for oil and imports from China.

While an improving trade deficit can act to boost the economy, analysts said the problem is that the recession in the U.S. has spread globally. That has cut into U.S. export sales, meaning American manufacturers will now have to contend with slumping domestic and foreign demand.

The Congressional Budget Office last week projected that the budget deficit for this fiscal year will hit $1.2 trillion. Yet that projection does not include any of the costs from the economic stimulus program that Obama is hoping Congress will pass in the next few weeks.

The cost of Obama's two-year program is expected to be around $800 billion.

Yesterday Obama, with top aides in tow, worked at what one aide called a continuing high-stakes effort to assure rapid congressional support for an unprecedented outpouring of money to reverse the country's downward economic spiral.

First, he's trying to persuade Congress to let him have the second half of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package created last fall. Senate Democrats signaled afterward that, while they still have questions about how he'll spend the money, they will give their OK this week so he can start tapping into the money within days of becoming president.

Second, he's still working to persuade lawmakers to approve a stimulus package that would allow him to spend upward of $800 billion over two years to create more than 3 million jobs, many of them in construction and manufacturing.

Democrats were hopeful that they could pass a bipartisan bill by mid-February, but they said that questions remained and the bill was still being negotiated. They said Obama was willing to bargain, apparently ready to drop a proposed $3,000-per-job tax credit to businesses for jobs created or saved, for example, and to expand an energy tax credit.

"Did he close the deal? Well, he did a lot of closing today," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. "There's no better closer."

The $40.4 billion trade deficit in November was the smallest monthly gap since November 2003. If left, the trade deficit for the year would run at an annual rate of $688.2 billion, down slightly from last year's $700.3 billion, which had marked the first drop after five consecutive years of record imbalances.

Analysts are predicting the trade deficit for all of 2009 will be less than half of this year's imbalance, reflecting the U.S. recession, which has cut import demand for merchandise and energy products, and helped to dampen oil prices after they hit a record high of $147 per barrel last July.

For November, imports fell by 12 percent to $183.2 billion, the lowest level in 2 1/2 years. The huge decline was led by the largest-ever drop in crude oil, reflecting a record fall in the average price of a barrel of crude. Total petroleum imports were down 36.5 percent to $23.6 billion.

For November, exports of goods and services dropped by 5.9 percent to $142.8 billion, the smallest level in 14 months.