Listen to the president talking about economic policy nowadays, and it is easy to forget that his first term was the most fiscally reckless in decades. The man who presided over the biggest spending increases since the 1960s is touting his new budget as the "most disciplined proposal since Ronald Reagan". The man who has never vetoed a spending bill boasts about cutting 150 federal programmes. The man who signed an extraordinarily expensive give-away to the elderly is now bent on sorting out the Social Security system. Has the profligate president seen the light? George Bush's budget and his pensions plan suggest different answers. The budget is not as tough as the president is making out: for instance, his proposal manages to halve the deficit by 2009 only with the help of some dodgy accounting, such as leaving out estimates for the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But with Social Security, Mr Bush seems genuinely committed to sorting out the system's long-term finances. Yet he faces an uphill political struggle to get it through Congress, one made more difficult by the fiscal recklessness of his first term.
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