Deficit Hawk Barack Obama?

The Politico reverts to New York Times journalism.

BARACK THE KNIFE: President Obama heads out on the first leg of his Midwestern trip this week with a visit to Iowa Tuesday — but not before meeting with members of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in the morning. The deficit commission, as it's more casually known, will sit down with the president in the Roosevelt Room for a conversation and pool spray.

Afterward, Obama plans to speak from the Rose Garden, according to White House guidance, "thanking the members of the Commission for their important service and underscore the importance of forging bipartisan consensus around recommendations to meaningfully improve our long-run fiscal health."

And then there's this howler:

Obama says he has taken steps to prevent leaving the next generations with a "mountain of debt," including asking Congress to restore a pay-as-you-go rule and ending budget "loopholes" for oil and gas companies.

"I kept my promise to pass a health care reform bill without adding a dime to the deficit," he says, adding that "attacking waste and fraud" will bring down debt by $1 trillion in two decades.