Barack Obama added four new proposals to his economic package today, but then said something you don’t usually hear in the final days of a campaign. He told his supporters the nation had lived beyond its means and we had to change that. It marked the end of an era.

Obama’s new initiatives were part of what he called "a rescue plan for the middle class," to follow the rescue for Wall Street. He proposed temporary tax credits for companies that create new jobs here. He embraced an idea McCain suggested to give retirees greater flexibility about when to start withdrawing from their IRAs and proposed to allow retirees to withdraw part of the retirement savings early without penalty. He borrowed Hillary Clinton’s idea for a 90-day foreclosure moratorium for homeowners whose banks were being bailed out by the government. And he proposed an open lending facility at the Fed to help cities and states facing short-term deficits.

But Obama also told his audience that the era of living beyond our means was over, not just for government, but for individuals:

It also means promoting a new ethic of responsibility. Part of the reason this crisis occurred is that everyone was living beyond their means – from Wall Street to Washington to even some on Main Street.

CEOs got greedy. Politicians spent money they didn’t have. Lenders tricked people into buying home they couldn’t afford and some folks knew they couldn’t afford them and bought them anyway.

We’ve lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to borrow instead of save.

Now, I know that in an age of declining wages and skyrocketing costs, for many folks this was not a choice but a necessity. People have been forced to turn to credit cards and home equity loans to keep up, just like our government has borrowed from China and other creditors to help pay its bills.

But we now know how dangerous that can be. Once we get past the present emergency, which requires immediate new investments, we have to break that cycle of debt. Our long-term future requires that we do what’s necessary to scale down our deficits, grow wages and encourage personal savings again.

Obama is accepting a staggering challenge for his Administration and the country. We know we have to fix the immediate financial crisis, and most agree we have to reboot the economy through stimulus while protecting those most adversely affected.

But Obama is also proclaiming a need to change the underlying basis of the economy, to abandon the borrow without care and let’s go shopping mentality that has prevailed for decades. It’s a revealing and unexpected dose of reality three weeks before an election.