Obama names budget director, promotes restraint

President-elect Barack Obama named Peter Orszag as his budget director on Tuesday and said his job will be to conduct a thorough review of federal spending programs, "eliminating those programs we don't need and insisting that those we do need operate in a cost-effective way."

With the economy in crisis, Obama said, "Budget reform is not an option. It's a necessity."

Echoing Abraham Lincoln, Obama added, "I will ask my economic team to think anew and act anew."

Orszag is the director of the Congressional Budget Office, a man who the president-elect said "knows where the bodies are buried."

Obama's focus on careful federal spending marked something of a contrast from Monday, when he declared that restoring the economy to health took priority over the budget deficit. He called on Congress to prepare an economic stimulus program for him to sign as soon after Inauguration day as possible. Estimates of the measure range from $500 billion to $700 billion over two years.

"We are going to have to jump-start the economy ... but we have to make sure that those investments are wise. We have to make sure we are not wasting money in every area," he said Tuesday, defining the two objectives that will guide his economic program.

Elected in an Electoral College landslide, Obama claimed "a mandate to move the country in a new direction and not continue the same old practices that have gotten us into the fix we are in."