Sanders: Obama admin becoming 'deficit hawks'

President Barack Obama's administration is becoming "deficit hawks," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned Tuesday.

The Vermont senator, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, said that the White House signals that agencies would need to scale back spending in 2010 would stall necessary spending to help rejuvenate the economy.

"The president -- we've heard signals from the White House that they're going to be asking agencies to start cutting back," Sanders said during an apperance on the liberal Bill Press Radio Show podcast. "They're now becoming deficit hawks."

Obama has put federal agencies on notice that they should plan to freeze or cut spending by up to five percent next year, the Associated Press reported last month.

Sanders said the freeze would curtail needed spending as the U.S. remains in the throes of a severe recession.

"You're going to see programs that the American people desperately need in the midst of a severe recession -- you're going to see, I think, a real roadblock to what many of us want to do, for example," he said, pointing to infrastructure investment and other federal spending.

Sanders also blamed the war in Afghanistan for contributing to an expanding deficit. The Vermont senator said he opposed Obama's plan to send more troops to Afghanistan, but signaled he was more torn about a proposed "war surtax" to fund the 30,000 more troops the president is expected to send to the country.

"I'm in a quandary; I don't support the damn thing to begin with," Sanders explained. "But what is unacceptable is what Bush did...you could fight the war in Iraq, and no one had to pay for it."