Obama Bets Big on Big Government

President-elect Barack Obama enunciated his vision for an activist — and expansive — government as the best way to address the economic crisis in a speech this morning, and in the process placed a major bet that the majority of Americans’ attitude toward government has changed drastically in recent years.

“Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy — where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending,” said Obama during his economic address at George Mason University — a stunning rejection of then President Bill Clinton’s 1996 declaration in his State of the Union address that “the era of big government is over.”

This is BIG government, at its biggest. And since it is a long term program…beyond the length of a Presidential term…it’s not a far reach to label his concept as the U.S.’s First Five Year Plan.