Terry Anderson and Gary Libecap argue, for instance, that the administration has not been candid with the American public about the costs of the "green" initiatives or about the likelihood of their ability to improve the environment and that these initiatives are likely to encourage protectionism, reduce international trade, and hence slow the recovery of the U.S. and world economies. James Huffman asserts that the "mad flurry" of infrastructure funding has simply led to a rush for the money, with no rational system for ensuring that the stated goals are achieved. And Richard Epstein examines the two major health-care policy initiatives and claims that both are too costly, as no government can successfully devise rules to constrain demand while seeking to drive to zero the health-care costs of recipients.

Kevin Hassett offers his views on upcoming tax reforms, raising the key question: Will they be a simple extension of the more-popular preexisting policies or reforms that are guided by the academic consensus? The answer, he says, will depend on our new president's economic philosophy. In addition, Charles W. Calomiris looks at bank regulatory reform, F. Scott Kieff and Henry E. Smith analyze the important but often-overlooked debate on patent reform, and Jagdish Bhagwati offers his views on the challenges of embracing an open world economy.

Ultimately, Reacting to the Spending Spree shows that it is important for the government to very soon pick one set of institutions, boldly similar or different from those our society has long used, and then stick to whatever it selects-for the costs of the vast uncertainties caused by ongoing change outweigh whatever benefits may come from tinkering further.

Terry Anderson is the John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the executive director of PERC—the Property and Environment Research Center—a think tank in Bozeman, Montana, that focuses on market solutions to environmental problems.

Contributors: Jagdish Bhagwati, Charles W. Calomiris, Richard A. Epstein, Stephen H. Haber, Kevin Hassett, James Huffman, F. Scott Kieff, Gary D. Libecap, and Henry E. Smith world economy, and more.