July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Paul McCulley said if a second U.S. stimulus package is passed, it must be guided by longer-term fiscal responsibility.

“I have difficulty coming down table pounding saying we need another stimulus package, but if you put a pistol in my ear I would say yes,” McCulley said in an interview today with Bloomberg Radio from Pimco’s headquarters in Newport Beach, California. “But it has to be in the context of a plan, not just a platitude, but a plan for fiscal responsibility.”

The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion plan approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an adviser to the Obama administration, said in a speech in Singapore today. Tyson’s comments contrast with remarks made two days ago by Vice President Joseph Biden and fellow Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee, who said it was premature to discuss crafting another stimulus plan because the current measures have yet to fully take effect.

McCulley and his colleagues at Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund managers, have called for the U.S. government to place a greater emphasis on fiscal responsibility as it borrows unprecedented amounts to lift the economy out of the greatest recession in 50 years.

Record Deficit

For the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts the deficit to reach a record $1.85 trillion, almost four times the previous fiscal year’s $455 billion shortfall.

A rising unemployment rate, currently at 9.5 percent, is expected by economists such as McCulley to weigh on tax receipts and increase pressure on the deficit as the U.S. issues a record amount of debt to narrow the gap. The U.S. will sell $3.25 trillion of debt in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to primary dealer Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Pimco has called for a “new normal” in the global economy that will include heightened government regulation, lower consumption, slower growth and a shrinking global role for the U.S. economy. U.S. growth rates will slow to 2 percent or less over the next five years, according to the firm.

As a result, investors should favor bonds and dividend- paying equities, said Bill Gross, co-founder and manager of the Total Return Fund, in his July investment outlook.

Credit Markets

Investment-grade corporate bonds returned 9.2 percent this year through June, beating Treasuries by a record 13.7 percentage points, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. indexes. The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have pledged more than $12.8 trillion to thaw frozen credit markets in hopes of pulling the economy out of the worst recession since the 1930s.

The Total Return Fund, with $161 billion of assets, has returned 6.9 percent this year, 10 percent over the past 12 months and 6.3 percent annually on average for the past five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

McCulley, 52, heads Pimco’s short-term bond desk. He joined Pimco in 1999 from UBS Warburg, where he was the chief economist for the Americas.

Between 1996 and 1998, McCulley was named six times as a member of the Institutional Investor All-America Fixed Income Research Team. He has an undergraduate degree from Grinnell College in Iowa and an MBA from Columbia University in New York.

To contact the reporter on this story: Susanne Walker in New York at swalker33@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 7, 2009 11:04 EDT