I was encouraged to see this Washington Post story:

Obama took a break from campaigning last week to call […] leaders of the “Blue Dog Coalition,” a group of conservative-leaning Democrats who are committed to balancing the federal budget. The group’s 49 members already wield significant power in the House, and their ranks are expected to expand in the next Congress…

Jason Furman, Obama’s economic policy adviser, has held his own extensive talks with Blue Dog Democrats and said Obama would seek to establish “a government unified around the concept of fiscal discipline and centered around the pay-go rule. Insisting on paying for things will lead to better economic policy.”

Whatever the outcome next month, the worsening economic crisis will place tremendous pressure on Congress to help stimulate a recovery.

Earlier in the presidential campaign, Obama had been reluctant to commit to the substantial tax increases and spending cuts that would be required to make his proposals budget-neutral. But as the economic picture grows more bleak, he has increasingly acknowledged the need for trade-offs, and Furman said he would be committed to establishing an overall budget framework that makes room for new programs but also requires meaningful cuts, along with tax increases on the wealthy.

The Blue Dogs cheered when he made his firmest commitment yet on the Senate floor recently…

“Runaway spending and record deficits are not how families run their budgets, and it can’t be how Washington handles people’s tax dollars,” Obama said in his Oct. 1 speech, delivered shortly before the Senate bailout vote. “It’s time to return to the fiscal responsibility we had in the 1990s. We need to go through the budget, get rid of programs that don’t work, and make the ones we do need work better and cost less. With less money flowing into the Treasury, some useful programs or policies might need to be delayed in the years ahead…”

Boyd, the group’s chairman, said Obama acknowledged in a discussion that “he’s got a very very difficult task ahead of him, in figuring out how to do all this. Issues like health care, education, we’re going to have to figure out how to balance out that. What I think he understands is, you can’t do any of that until you get your fiscal house in order. You get your budget back in balance. We’re very pleased to hear him saying those things.”

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), a budget expert who endorsed Obama early in his campaign, had pressed the Democratic nominee to court his colleagues. Cooper said the result was likely to be real flexibility in setting a new budget course. “We’re going to have an engaged President Obama, and I think we will have a good fiscal steward.”