Barack Obama: Deficit Hawk

If you didn't know better, one might think this was a satire article from the Onion:

The word went out among Washington politicos yesterday: Barack Obama is about to become very, very tough on federal spending.

I was talking to a Democratic strategist yesterday (our talks are always on a no-name-used basis). He is a supporter of health care reform -- he prefers the Baucus bill at the moment -- but told me that, immediately after winning the health care battle, Obama needs to take a radically different course.

"As soon as health care reform is over, he needs to pivot hard to becoming a deficit and spending hawk and a jobs creator," the strategist told me. "He should say, 'We did the stimulus because the world would have collapsed if we didn't. We did health care because it's something that needed to be done for working families and will reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years. And now, we're going to become absolute tyrants on spending, and that means I'm going to be vetoing things.'"

Now that you've picked yourself up off the floor, you'll find yourself falling back down to learn that they're going to become deficit hawks...soon (but not yet):

Not Right Now: Real Soon Now (via AoSHQ). Apparently the plan is to wait until after the current wave of spending, then convince the Democratic party to stop spending taxpayer money that does not, in point of fact, quite exist. Except for funding a new jobs bill, which somehow isn’t expected to ‘count.’

But can he do it, after… oh, let Bryon York get this one:

I asked whether Obama, after presiding over the stimulus, the bailouts, the big Democratic budget, the House cap-and-trade vote, health care reform, and finally, a tripling of the already-high federal deficit, could plausibly position himself as a spending hawk. “Their principle failure is that they have allowed themselves to be defined as government interventioners and huge spenders,” the strategist told me. “If he becomes the great expander of government and the great increaser of spending, he’s going to get destroyed in 2012.”

Actually, the principal failure is that they are government interventionists and huge spenders - and have revealed this blatantly enough that independent voters have noticed. In other words, it’s not ‘If he becomes;’ it’s ‘he has become.’ That’s the primary reason why his economic marks are so poor Right Now - and why waiting for Real Soon Now is contraindicated.

But hey, let's not rain on the hope-n-change parade

Oh, and by the way, it's looking more and more likely that unemployment will not stop until it reaches at least 12%. Just thought that might be applicable in this conversation.

There's my two cents.