By John Cranford, CQ Columnist

Here’s an unconventional thought for an unconventional time: If you want to know what kind of long-range fiscal policies Barack Obama is going to espouse, pay no attention to what he does for the next six months. Maybe even for the next year. Then, start asking.

Whatever the new president proposes and however the new Congress disposes of his requests, the state of the economy is so bad that he and lawmakers of both parties are likely to throw all manner of ideas — meaning money — at the wall to see if anything sticks. It’s nigh impossible to find anyone who doesn’t want Washington to engage in economic “stimulus” to mitigate against the potentially devastating recession that’s breaking over the United States. And Obama isn’t going to disappoint on that front.

As a result, nothing the new president and the next Congress will do between now and early next year will address the serious, long-term structural problems that plague the federal budget, the next generation of taxpayers (and several generations after that) and the soon-to-be retiring baby boomers who may not find the safety net is there for them.

Whether Obama turns out to be the president who is willing and able to address those problems will have to wait. The only question is: How long?

There cannot be much doubt left that the U.S. economy is in a recession. The job loss statistics we saw last week — 10 straight months of shrinking payrolls that total 1.2 million eliminated positions and the highest unemployment rate since 1994 — will only get worse before Inauguration Day. And barely a week after Obama takes office, the Commerce Department is expected to report that the economy shriveled in the final three months of this year. That will mean we’ve suffered through two straight quarters of contraction already, the first time that happened since 1990-91.

The president-elect is already making plans to put money in the hands of those who might spend it to keep the economy afloat: With his urging, Congress may enact a smallish stimulus bill in the next week or two. There’s already a $61 billion House-passed measure of extended jobless benefits, Medicaid assistance and infrastructure money that could be sent to President Bush on short order, provided he signals a willingness to go along.

Then, prodded by overwhelming evidence that the economy is getting worse, the new president will press for yet another stimulus bill soon after his swearing-in. The result will be that the current year budget deficit balloons well past $1 trillion — and amount to between 7 percent and 8 percent of the U.S. economy as a whole, the highest it’s been since World War II.

There is certain to be hand-wringing over all this red ink. But there is also a broad consensus that now is not the time for raising taxes. Nor is it the time for cutting back on government spending. Now is the time to open the taps to try to keep a bad recession from becoming the Greater Depression.

But Now Isn’t Permanent

We’ll see what kind of economic thinker Obama is if, at some point, he concludes that the short-term crisis has been addressed sufficiently and that it’s necessary to turn his attention to the fact that the government cannot afford to live up to its promises on health care and Social Security, to name but two.

When, and if, Obama makes that turn will be critical.

Two prominent Washington advocates of fiscal responsibility argue for a little patience. One is Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and Brookings Institution economist who was the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, who ran the Office of Management and Budget under Bill Clinton and who served as vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve. The other is G. William Hoagland, a Republican who spent most of the past three decades on Capitol Hill as the top budget aide to Senate GOP leaders, and who now heads the public policy office of Cigna Corp.