Politics & Power Quote by Donald Evans

"Very, very tough" is the kind of phrase that tries to do policy work with pure posture. Evans isn’t promising a line-item veto; he’s selling an attitude. The doubling of "very" is the tell: it’s there to reassure, to project grit in a language that stays intentionally nontechnical. In Washington, where spending debates are a thicket of entitlements, defense, tax expenditures, and politically sacred cows, vagueness isn’t a bug. It’s a shield.

The intent is twofold. First, it signals to fiscal conservatives and wary taxpayers that the White House understands their anxiety about deficits and government bloat. Second, it preemptively reframes the next budget fight as a test of presidential character rather than arithmetic. If the numbers disappoint, the administration can still claim the mantle of toughness: the effort was noble, the opposition obstructed, the choices were hard.

The subtext is also transactional. A spokesperson like Evans often speaks to markets, donors, and cable-news audiences at once, translating messy governance into a clean narrative of discipline. "Spending" here becomes a symbolic enemy, a catch-all for inefficiency and indulgence, without naming whose programs will actually get cut. That omission keeps coalitions intact: everyone can hear "tough on spending" and assume it means trimming someone else’s priorities.

Context matters because "tough" is a campaign-season adjective smuggled into governing talk. It borrows credibility from law-and-order rhetoric: the President as enforcer, the budget as a problem of willpower. The line works because it asks listeners to trust temperament over specifics, a classic move when specifics are the thing most likely to fracture the message.