Stage Set for 'Biggest Fight' Over America's Future

WASHINGTON, March 1, 2009— -- The battle over President Obama's historic -- and historically expensive -- budget begins this week.

The blueprint for the nation's spending marks the most dramatic ideological shift since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It would overhaul health care, boost spending on education and global warming, and shift more of the cost to wealthy taxpayers and corporations.

Speaking on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, the president's economic point man, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszak, defended the $3.5 trillion plan.

"We face big problems, and we've got to tackle them," Orszak said. "Clearly, this budget is changing course."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, he will testify before the House and Senate budget committees on Capitol Hill, where critics like Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich say he faces a battle of historic proportions.

"This budget sets the stage for the biggest fight over the future of America since 1965," Gingrich told CBS News.

If so, history is on the Democrats' side, political analyst Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute told ABC News.

"In 1965, Lyndon Johnson, with swollen majorities in Congress, got the Great Society through, so if Newt is saying that the parallel is 1965, that's bad news for Republicans because he picked a time when Democrats managed to stomp all over them and change the face of America," Ornstein said.

Just weeks into his honeymoon as a new president, the president also has the advantage of public support. Obama is trusted by more Americans on the economy than his Republican critics are, 61 percent to 26 percent, according to a Feb. 23 ABC News-Washington Post poll with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Because budget bills cannot be blocked by filibuster, Democrats need only a simple majority, rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes to approve it. So unless the president loses the support of a significant number of conservative Democrats, when all the debate is over, the Democrat-controlled Congress is likely to approve a version to his liking.