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When President Obama delivered a major economic speech at Georgetown University last week, he called it "A New Foundation." He might have called it "Beyond Recovery." His message was that we've got to look at the nation's economy in the long term.

The president wants Americans to see his agenda as one huge package. He began by saying, "Many Americans are simply wondering how all of our different programs and policies fit together in a single, overarching strategy that will move this economy from recession to recovery and, ultimately, to prosperity."

Are they?

According to this month's CNN poll taken by Opinion Research, 58 percent of Americans think that the president has a clear plan for solving the country's economic problems. Forty-two percent don't.

What will save us from ruin, in Obama's view, is not spending cuts or tax hikes. It's growth.

The president must respond to the doubters, such as the tens of thousands of protesters who gathered at "tea parties" around the country on April 15 to protest government spending and bailouts -- and not just by Democrats. "Republicans blew it on spending, but now Democrats are on steroids with spending," said Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. In the view of Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., "What the American people are saying is that they are tired of the same old thing in Washington, which is spending and borrowing, spending and borrowing."

Obama can hardly deny that his agenda includes a lot of spending and borrowing, but he wants Americans to see the bigger picture. He called for "a new foundation for growth and prosperity ... that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest." What's the difference? Spending is short-term. Investment is long- term.

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package is aimed at short-term recovery. In a word, jobs. But the president is also asking for a lot of new spending that is aimed further out.

The president's proposed budget includes new spending on energy, education, health care, housing, the financial industry, and the auto industry. That's "investment," aimed at long-term prosperity. The president used a homespun analogy to illustrate the difference: "Just as a cash-strapped family may cut back on luxuries but will still insist on spending money to get their children through college, or will refuse to have their kids to drop out of college ... because they're thinking about the long term, so we as a country have to make current choices with an eye on the future."

Critics see a hidden agenda behind the president's big-spending plans: The bloated budget will ultimately force Congress to raise taxes. It's the mirror image of the not-so-hidden agenda behind President Reagan's tax cuts. The idea then was that if tax revenues declined sharply Congress would ultimately have to cut spending ("starve the beast"). Big spending cuts didn't happen then, and big tax hikes are no more likely to happen now.

What did happen as a result of tax cuts was that economic growth eventually brought the budget into balance for a few years. Obama is counting on the same outcome now. What will save us from ruin, in his view, is not spending cuts or tax hikes. It's growth, or "prosperity."

Republicans insist they have a better plan. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., ranking member of the House Budget Committee, described the GOP budget as "lower on deficits, lower on spending, lower on taxes, and higher on jobs." But the House Republican Conference split over how much detail to include in the plan. The Democratic National Committee mocked the Republican document as "a glossy blue pamphlet ... light on specifics ... brought to you by the number zero." As in, zero details.

Do Americans think that congressional Republicans have a clear plan for solving the nation's economic problems? Nearly three-quarters of respondents in the CNN poll said no.

Obama is resisting pressure to toss spending on health care, education, and energy out of his budget to make it cheaper and easier to pass. Some of the pressure is coming from his own advisers. The president says that pressure is for "instant gratification," encouraged by shorter news cycles and shorter attention spans.

The president is defying that culture. He wants long-term thinking -- something radically different from the norm in American politics.