President Obama continues to enjoy strong public approval ratings in virtually every category, except when it comes to spending and the deficit.

And though White House strategists swear they don't fixate on day-to-day blips in public opinion, they surely are concerned that the administration's budget proposals are projected to swell the deficit above $1.8 trillion this fiscal year -- a record in dollar terms and also the biggest deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product since the end of World War II.

So it was hardly coincidence that Obama on Tuesday took a high-profile vow of fiscal responsibility by calling for a return to statutory "pay-as-you-go" treatment for legislation. The deficit-control rules were first written into law in the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 (PL 101-508), but Republicans who controlled Congress for most of the current decade allowed them to lapse at the end of fiscal 2002, preferring to require offsets for new entitlement spending but not for tax cuts.

When Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus laughs, you know President Obama and Congress don’t have their health care plan locked down yet.

This afternoon, Obama met at the White House with Baucus and the other Senate Democrats from the chamber’s two health care panels: Finance and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee. After the meeting, all pledged full speed ahead on health care, and Baucus said the goal was to have a bill on Obama’s desk by October.

But when asked if the president and Senate Democrats had talked about how to pay for it — perhaps the most difficult part of all — the Montana Democrat’s laugh told pretty much everything we need to know.

“There was some discussion of that,” he said. “It’s all on the table, and we’ll figure that out.”

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman was the kind of Republican who genuinely made Democrats nervous — a moderate governor who might have been one of the Republicans’ strongest candidates to retake the White House in 2012. So a couple of weeks ago, President Obama found a clever solution. He sent Huntsman to China.

Today, Obama again reached across the aisle for a key administration appointment — nominating Rep. John M. McHugh of New York, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, to become the new secretary of the Army. Once again, Obama will get credit for stocking his administration with more Republicans. And once again, there’s a political side benefit — a chance for the Democrats to win his seat in upstate New York.