During his appearance on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, President-Elect Barack Obama said that the economic crisis would be hard on every single American, and that “everybody’s going to have to give” in order to enable the U.S. government to help revive the economy.

“Our challenge is going to be identifying what works and putting more money into that, eliminating things that don’t work, and making things that we have more efficient. But I’m not suggesting, George, I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped,” Obama said.

“Right now,” the soon-to-be first African American president in history went on to say, “I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?”

“Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game,” Obama said.

Although it is logical that “everybody’s going to have to give,” one wonders why it is that “everybody” does not include Congressmen, who voted in favor of pay raise only recently. When the Democratic president-elect tells Americans they will all have to do with a little bit less in the coming months, possibly years, it makes no sense for the Democratic-controlled Congress to raise its own salary.

That having been said, few people can probably disagree with Obama’s basic premise; when an economic crisis hits a country, all citizens will have to give up some money and privileges. After all, when the economy is in a recession, businesses sell products, meaning that more people will become unemployed and those who are working will have to accept a lower reward for the same amount (or more) of work.

Sadly, however, many – and I am one of the ‘many’ – fear that Obama does not mean everybody as much as he means ‘the rich’ (meaning the upper middle class and higher). He wants to significantly grow government; this will cost a lot of money. Since he has to get the from somewhere, he will most likely raise taxes (eventually) on those earning more than average. Not because such policies truly help improve the economy, but because they help close the gap between the rich and poor, and everyone in between; a progressive ideal Obama wholeheartedly supports.

When one hears Obama say that he may not be able to implement all the plans he promised to implement during the campaign due to the economic crisis, one wonders what kind of grand plans he had in mind exactly. After all, it is hard to top the plans he is currently working on, which are expected to cost the American taxpayer several trillions of dollars in only a few years time and which will change the U.S. economy tremendously.

Although Obama’s grand plans may be applauded by many liberals, the reality of the matter is that progressive economic policies have proved ineffective, even harmful to the economy in the long run. Republicans would be wise to oppose Obama’s economic stimulus package strongly, vocally and passionately; if they do, they may be able to convince a considerable part of the American people that they are, indeed, the party of small government rather than of fiscal irresponsibility.

Obama could, as I wrote several weeks ago, indeed turn out to be a foreign policy realist and a domestic progressive, who aims at radically transforming the U.S. economy.