PAYGO Football

Soren is right that Obama is already walking away from moderation when he, as Matt Stoller put it, "renounce[d] the stupid PAYGO rules".  Like everybody who decides PAYGO is inconvenient, Stoller rationalizes it by excluding from the calculation spending that he finds appealing.  The problem with this, of course, is that you can't simply attribute debt to "the good kind of spending"; money is fungible.

Obama had previously said it was a "Number 1" priority that "we shouldn't be running up budget deficits", written in his book that we should "restore ... PAYGO", and his website says he "strongly supports ... commonsense “Pay As You Go,” or “PayGo” rules".  But now....

Change!

In any event, Obama had already announced this last year during the 2007 Yearly Kos convention.  At the time, Ezra Klein reported....

Obama says he's not going to sacrifice his domestic priorities for deficit reduction. Universal health care, renewable energy, and all the rest won't be sacrificed on the altar of PAYGO.

I'm not sure why the media never calls out politicians when they talk about fiscal responsibility.  Lucy always pulls the football away.  You would think they would have enough pride to stop playing the part of Charlie Brown.