deficit hawk

deficit hawk (plural deficit hawks)

1. (politics, slang, sometimes derogatory) A person, especially one in power, who emphasizes keeping government budgets under control, derogatory when such actions are seen as predatory or entail harsh fiscal discipline or austerity.
   • 1995 January 6, Clay Chandler, “Deficit hawk takes the catbird seat”, in The Washington Post:

     He is renowned for his ingenuity, enthusiasm and persistence ... and has established himself as one of the legislature's most ferocious deficit hawks.

   • 2003 April 14, Robert Novak, “The last deficit hawk”, in Townhall‎, archived from the original on 9 May 2021:

     Such a lethal crossfire is the lot of a dying political breed: the deficit hawk, who obsesses on an accounting number as the lodestar of economic well-being.

   • 2013 February 25, Kevin Drum, Mother Jones‎:

     DC reporters and columnists are endlessly willing to pretend that someone whose only real-world devotion is to cutting social welfare spending is a “deficit hawk.”

   • 2020 January 10, Eric Boehm, Reason‎:

     Some of them—like former deficit hawk Mick Mulvaney and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who made his name in Congress as the GOP's budget-maker—deserve special ignominy for abandoning their fiscal conservatism when it was most needed.