Deficit hawk is an American political slang term for people who place great emphasis on keeping the federal budget under control. Deficit hawks believe the best way to reduce the deficit, pay off national debt, and balance the budget is by a combination of increasing taxes and cutting government spending. George Voinovich of Ohio was perhaps the most recent best-known deficit hawk in the United States Senate, as were Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, Phil Gramm of Texas and Fritz Hollings of South Carolina and Bob Dole of Kansas during their years in the Senate. The Peterson Foundation is a prominent advocate of this position. The Concord Coalition is a bipartisan political advocacy group made up of deficit hawks and is perhaps the largest and most influential political advocacy group dedicated to promoting a balanced budget.
Some believe that deficit hawks use deficits as an excuse to oppose government spending. William Greider claims that "their real intent is to stymie the very spending programs that can deliver economic recovery and relief to battered citizens" [1]. He points to the example of World War II spending during the Great Depression, in which the government ran up massive deficits but brought about America's postwar prosperity by taking greater control of the economy, focusing production on arms and suppressing consumption.