Can You Call Government 'Morbidly Obese' Without Contempt?

Indiana governor and former Office of Management and Budget director Mitch Daniels (R) is, to say the least, not a fan of expanding government. He has wielded an ax in balancing his state's budget and now, as a potential GOP presidential candidate, he's traveling around the country to rail against the country's fiscal woes.

That involves taking some shots at Uncle Sam. "Our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric surgery," Daniels said in a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last weekend. "The perverse presumption that places the burden of proof on the challenger of spending must be inverted, back to the rule that applies elsewhere in life: 'Prove to me why we should.' "

But Daniels also tried to separate his fiscal restraint from attacks on government as an institution. "We should distinguish carefully skepticism about big government from contempt for all government," he said. "After all, it is a new government we hope to form, a government we will ask our fellow citizens to trust to make huge changes."