(CNN) -- "Who controls the past controls the future."

President Reagan's former aides say Obama's budget repudiates Reaganomics.

It's a line from George Orwell's novel "1984." But it could also serve as the rallying cry for two groups battling over President Obama's ambitious domestic agenda -- and the legacy of two former presidents.

Critics of Obama's proposed $3.5 trillion federal budget say he's poised to jeopardize the economic gains unleashed by President Reagan.

They say he will make the same mistakes that President Lyndon B. Johnson did when he committed massive amounts of federal money to create a slew of anti-poverty programs dubbed "The Great Society."

"The Great Society created a lot of programs and wasted a lot of money," said Kenneth Khachigian, a former Reagan speechwriter and adviser. "The biggest war on poverty was the economic boom started by Reagan."

But others like Joseph Califano Jr., Johnson's senior domestic adviser, say the notion that the Great Society was a failure is one of the "greatest political scams" in American history.

Republican leaders who have labeled Obama's budget proposals socialist are rehashing the rhetoric their predecessors used to attack Great Society programs like Head Start 40 years ago, Califano says.

"I'm hearing the same round of arguments," Califano said. "The Republicans said that if you provide Head Start and preschool education to poor kids, it would 'Sovietize' our kids and be communistic."

'Failure' of the Great Society

The clash between both points of view centers on Obama's plan for reviving the nation's economy.

The Senate and the House of Representatives passed similar versions of Obama's $3.5 trillion budget for 2010 last week. The budget didn't receive a single Republican vote in either chamber. Both chambers will meet after Easter recess to produce a final budget.

Even before last week's vote, though, Obama's budget was creating a partisan wedge. Proponents said it would use trillions of dollars to transform education, spark a green industrial revolution and provide health care to all Americans.

CNN political analyst David Gergen said Obama's budget "set forth the most ambitious reform agenda of any president since Lyndon Johnson."

Gergen's comment could be taken as a compliment or a reprimand, depending on one's historical point of view.

Craig Shirley, author of "Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All," took it as a warning.

His model for reviving the nation is Reagan, who moved "power from the government to the people" by cutting taxes and making government less intrusive.

Shirley, alluding to an alleged Reagan quip that "Johnson declared war on poverty and poverty won," says out-of-wedlock births, illiteracy and bloated federal programs increased during the Great Society.

He says Medicare and Medicaid, two vaunted Great Society programs that provide health care to the poor and elderly, are now virtually bankrupt.

"All evidence says that the Great Society was a failure," Shirley said.

Khachigian, Reagan's speechwriter, says Obama's budget would also create tension between people who fought their way up the economic ladder and those who did not. Under Obama, the well-off would be "brought back down through higher taxes and subsidizing benefits for people who have not worked as hard."

Obama's budget is influenced by the president's previous job as a community organizer, Khachigian says.

"You can't have been a community organizer and not have in your mindset that agencies of the government exist to, as Obama said, to 'spread the wealth,' '' Khachigian said.

If Obama wants to look at an economic blueprint for lifting the nation out of a nasty recession, he should look at Reagan, Khachigian says.

Reagan's tax cuts helped end the deep recession he inherited when he came into office, he said. The economy took off, and everyone benefited.

"I would argue that the biggest war on poverty took place when the economy started
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