Deficit hawk is a political

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-g ...

term in the English speaking world for people who place great emphasis on keeping government budgets under control. 'Hawk' can be used to describe someone calling for harsh or pain-inducing measures (alluding to the

predatory Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

nature of

hawks Hawks are birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. They are widely distributed and are found on all continents except Antarctica. * The subfamily Accipitrinae includes goshawks, sparrowhawks, sharp-shinned hawks and others. This subfamily ...

in the natural world) in many political contexts; in the specific context of deficit reduction, the term is more commonly applied to those advocating for cuts in government spending than to those supporting increases in taxes. Economist and opinion writer

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...

has popularized the use of "deficit scold" in place of deficit hawk. According to Krugman, a columnist of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', " the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is deficit-scold central; Peterson funding lies behind much of the movement." Deficit hawks often warn that unsustainable fiscal policies could lead to investors losing confidence in U.S. government bonds, which would in turn force an increase in interest rates. Krugman has dismissed this concern by saying that there is no evidence that these "bond vigilantes" will appear anytime soon. The Concord Coalition is another influential political advocacy group dedicated to promoting a balanced budget in the United States. The Coalition is generally perceived as bipartisan. Critics of deficit hawks have argued that hawks stoke fears about the deficit in order to dismantle the

social safety net The social safety net (SSN) consists of non-contributory assistance existing to improve lives of vulnerable families and individuals experiencing poverty and destitution. Examples of SSNs are previously-contributory social pensions, in-kind and fo ...

William Greider William Harold Greider (August 6, 1936 – December 25, 2019) was an American journalist and author who wrote primarily about economics. Early life and education Greider was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on August 6, 1936, to Harold William Greider ...

claims, "Their real intent is to stymie the very spending programs that can deliver economic recovery and relief to battered citizens." Greider points to the example of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

spending during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, in which the government ran up massive deficits but set up America's postwar prosperity. And

Dean Baker Dean Baker (born July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) with Mark Weisbrot. Baker has been credited as one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–08 United Sta ...

, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), suggests a duplicity in their motives as well: The political power of deficit hawks has waned considerably since the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, which resulted in widespread deficit spending by many governments around the world in order to combat the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.As Some Deficit Hawks Turn Dove, the New Politics of Debt Are on Display
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deficit Hawk Political terminology of the United States Government budgets

See also

References