Dictionary

deficit hawk en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (derogatory, slang, sometimes) 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.
   • 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.” 2013 February 25, Kevin Drum, Mother Jones:
   • 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. 2020 January 10, Eric Boehm, Reason:
   • He is renowned for his ingenuity, enthusiasm and persistence ... and has established himself as one of the legislature's most ferocious deficit hawks. 1995 January 6, Clay Chandler, “Deficit hawk takes the catbird seat”, in The Washington Post:
   • 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. 2003 April 14, Robert Novak, “The last deficit hawk”, in Townhall, archived from the original on 09 May 2021:

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