As a journalist, I learned early to pay attention to the budget. It’s where we take all our policy ideas, goals and plans and make them real. Which makes tomorrow my journalistically favorite day of the year – the day the President’s annual budget proposal starts the process of deciding how our nation’s government will spend its money.

Here’s a setup in the Sunday newspaper on the largest single-ticket item for New Mexico:

Budget reality could come crashing down Monday on Los Alamos National Laboratory and the most expensive construction project in New Mexico history.

Faced with risings costs for two proposed multibillion-dollar nuclear weapons-related projects, one in Tennessee and the second at Los Alamos, the National Nuclear Security Administration may be forced to choose. President Obama’s administration, set to release its proposed fiscal year 2013 budget Monday, is widely expected to send the money to Tennessee.