Welcome to the Democrat bizarro world where up is down, down is up and spending is necessary to avoid bankruptcy (thanks Uncle Biden). It seems that our wonderful federal government has started off the fiscal year with a bang posting a whopping $176.36 billion dollar deficit for the month of October.

The federal government kicked off fiscal year 2010 by posting its widest-ever October budget deficit, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

The $176.36 billion gap is more than $20 billion wider than the shortfall recorded in October 2008, driven up by lower tax receipts, stimulus-related revenue reductions and consistently high government outlays.

Treasury’s monthly budget statement shows receipts were $135.33 billion in October, down 18% from a year earlier and at the lowest level since October 2002. Meanwhile, outlays were $311.69 billion, down 3% from a year earlier and at their second-highest monthly level on record.

The story also points out a couple of other scary facts about our spend-thrift government. First, the deficit is now equivalent to about 10% of our GDP, the highest ratio we have had in this country since 1945. Oh, and we paid about $17 billion in interest just last month. Just in interest!

I find it funny that the Congressional Budget Office estimated a deficit by of about $165 billion and they were off by more the $11 billion dollars. This is the same office that projects over 10 years that national health-care will likely be deficit neutral (but that’s really not true because they used a bunch of account tricks to even claim that much). Even assuming they used some accurate accounting methods they were off by $11 billion in just one month, now multiply that by 120 months and you’re starting to talk about real money.

But never fear, it seems that we’ll soon have a deficit champion who will fight for reduced spending and get our budget back on track. That new crusader is . . . Barack Obama! No, I’m not kidding, see for yourself.

The word went out among Washington politicos yesterday: Barack Obama is about to become very, very tough on federal spending.

I was talking to a Democratic strategist yesterday (our talks are always on a no-name-used basis). He is a supporter of health care reform — he prefers the Baucus bill at the moment — but told me that, immediately after winning the health care battle, Obama needs to take a radically different course.

“As soon as health care reform is over, he needs to pivot hard to becoming a deficit and spending hawk and a jobs creator,” the strategist told me. “He should say, ‘We did the stimulus because the world would have collapsed if we didn’t. We did health care because it’s something that needed to be done for working families and will reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years. And now, we’re going to become absolute tyrants on spending, and that means I’m going to be vetoing things.’”

I asked whether Obama, after presiding over the stimulus, the bailouts, the big Democratic budget, the House cap-and-trade vote, health care reform, and finally, a tripling of the already-high federal deficit, could plausibly position himself as a spending hawk. “Their principle failure is that they have allowed themselves to be defined as government interventioners and huge spenders,” the strategist told me. “If he becomes the great expander of government and the great increaser of spending, he’s going to get destroyed in 2012.”

But Obama already is the great expander of government and the great increaser of spending, I said. There’s a factual basis for his image. How can he change that? “He’s got the bully pulpit,” the Democrat said. “When he opens his mouth, everybody writes it. He needs to open his mouth on this and frame it and define it until it’s holy writ.

Apparently Obama’s cost-cutting strategy is going to simply be to talk a bunch of crap like he’s cutting spending, and he expects the media to carry his water for him . . . which they’ll probably do. It stretches beyond credulity that a President who wants to pass national health-care, the cap and trade bill and the largest budget we’ve had in years and years wants to suddenly become a deficit hawk. Does he even care about our country at all? I guess that’s just the Chicago way.