Bayh: Obama should apply resoluteness in Oslo toward deficits

President Barack Obama needs to show the same resoluteness in tackling the deficit as he showed in his Nobel Prize speech, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) urged Friday.

Bayh said it would take a political act of courage similar to what Obama demonstrated Thursday during a speech in Oslo, Norway in order to help slash the deficits.

"It would be a nice domestic parallel to the speech he gave in Oslo," he said during an appearance on MSNBC. "We need to bring the same sense of resoluteness to tackling the deficit and getting our spending in order."

Bayh is one of a handful of centrist, deficit hawk Democrats who have pushed for an independent spending commission to identify areas of the federal budget for cuts. Bayh has met with Obama on the proposed commission in recent weeks.

"The public is way ahead of Washington on this one. They know we can't keep maxing out the national credit card the way we have," Bayh said. "So some of us are going to insist we get some real reform before raising the debt limit."

The Indiana Democrat acknowledged, though, that getting the commission over the objection of liberals in his own party and politically-minded Republicans would be difficult.

He said Republicans may vote down the deficit commission proposal out of a sense that it would hurt Democrats.

"One of the things we're hearing about in the vote coming up…on the other side they'd normal be inclined to go along with this," he said.

"It's difficult," Bayh added. "It's one of the reasons we wanted the vote after the election."

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