Asked what he would tell Congress if he were in Mr. Obama's shoes in the impasse over the federal deficit and the debt ceiling, Mr. Romney cited three imperatives: cut spending, cap spending and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
With a backdrop of austerity and spending cuts, the imperative to find better ways of getting more from shrinking public resources is clear.
Mr. Daniels's address focused almost completely on the nation's dire fiscal circumstances, the need to control spending and the imperative to overhaul the country's teetering entitlement programs, Medicare and Social Security.
Controlling the rate of growth of healthcare spending is an imperative.
"The increases come at a time of highly stressed operations, when Fitch believes spending reductions are imperative to maintaining fiscal stability".
These record-high spending numbers demonstrate the imperative need for today's youth to understand the importance of creating and using a budget.
In both cases, politically connected investment groups use their inside-information networks to attach themselves to those sections of the federal bureaucracy that will be primed by their party's imperatives of federal spending.
That makes Government spending cuts all the more imperative.
Drug makers' biggest customers have realized that they are big enough to affect sales unilaterally, and the rapid rise in spending on drugs makes it imperative for them to act.
But with the country sliding into what promises to be a sharp and protracted economic downturn, it is imperative to increase spending over the short run, regardless of how we pay for it.
