Obama buries Reaganomics under $3.6 trillion mountain

The president has killed off the idea of small government with a vast schedule of tax and spend to combat recession.

AS Barack Obama prepared to deliver his speech to a joint session of Congress last week, his aides raced to television studios to deliver the official spin.

Evoking the cheerful optimism in tough times of a fondly remembered president, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs predicted his boss would be “Reaganesque”. No matter how dire the global meltdown, “there would always be better days ahead”.

The Great Communicator of the 1980s would have recognised his successor’s upbeat tone, but not his policies. When Obama unveiled his eye-popping $3.6 trillion (£2.5 trillion) budget proposal two days later, it was clear he had come not to praise Ronald Reagan, but to bury him.

“I don’t think we can continue on our current course,” Obama said. “I work for the American people and I’m determined to bring the change that the people voted for last November.” Democrats, who have been conditioned for years to expect their leaders to renege on their left-wing campaign promises, were jubilant.

The scale of Obama’s ambition has only just begun to sink in. If his budget for 2010 passes through Congress largely unscathed, it will represent the “the biggest redistribution of income from the wealthy to the middle class and poor this nation has seen in more than 40 years”, said Robert Reich, a former secretary of labour under Bill Clinton who has been advising Obama.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Reich told The Sunday Times: “It is the boldest budget we have seen since the Reagan administration, and drives a nail in the coffin of Reaganomics. We can basically say goodbye to the philosophy espoused by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.”

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