Visiting Scholar Charles Calomiris

Obama's economic policies are disastrously anti-growth. Health-care policy would substantially raise costs, reduce the quality of care and reduce people's control over their own health-care decisions--a lose, lose, lose. There has been no progress on trade policy, bilateral or multilateral, and there are significant risks of a major backlash against free trade, particularly related to the cap and trade bill. Tax rates will rise dramatically, with proposals now to raise the highest federal tax rate to 45%, and that does not include all the new taxes.

When you get to 2012, or even 2010, you're looking at serious potential consequences for the Obama administration. I think his economic team is probably telling him this. But Obama is truly ideologically committed to the leftist agenda of expanding government in irreversible ways. I don't think economic growth is very high on his list, and perhaps he is even willing to risk not being reelected.

Charles W. Calomiris is a visiting scholar at AEI.