CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama says he knows he'll have an "enormous deficit" to confront once the economy is back on track.

But he says it'll be easier to tackle that deficit when the economy is up and running.

Obama told reporters in Chicago on Friday that every economist he's spoken to has told him that the most important thing to do — even for the deficit — is to fix the economy. Otherwise, he says, the government will have to spend more on services for out-of-work Americans, and the deficit will grow even faster.

He says the deficit is not a problem that he's simply going to leave for a future president.

As for the infrastructure projects that will be part of his plan to reinvigorate the economy, Obama says none of them will represent wasteful spending.