The Obama administration, for obvious reasons, won’t cop to their own radicalism. They are just “pragmatic,” they intone. They really are interested in budgetary sobriety — well not now, but later. All of this stems from a realization that the electorate did not vote for radicalism and, when quizzed on specifics, is not in favor of spending gobs of money or seeing government bailouts. But facts are stubborn things.

Michael Boskin writes:

Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

Mainstream reporters and liberal pundits roll their eyes when conservatives talk about Obama’s desire to drag us toward a western socialist model. But this is precisely what is going on. Deeming the Obama agenda “bereft of rigorous analysis and a careful reading of history,” Boskin concludes:

On the growth effects of a large expansion of government, the European social welfare states present a window on our potential future: standards of living permanently 30% lower than ours. Rounding off perceived rough edges of our economic system may well be called for, but a major, perhaps irreversible, step toward a European-style social welfare state with its concomitant long-run economic stagnation is not.

Democrats may shrink from the label “socialist,” but they can’t deny the scope and direction of the president’s agenda. More important, they’re not embracing a model which has (ever?) succeeded in producing growth and prosperity. So whatever you call it, it is not a recipe for recovery.