By Martin Hutchinson Contributing Editor Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, recently told The Wall Street Journal that he intended to lift the United States out of recession through a burst of government spending on infrastructure and a venture capital fund for the new energy sector. Obama has made few economic mistakes in his campaign - he avoided the economically counterproductive proposal to cut petrol taxes between Memorial Day and Labor Day backed by both John McCain and Hillary Clinton - but he has shown his Achilles’ heel with this proposal. There may be many reasons to increase government spending, to better defend America or to introduce a more generous healthcare plan or other social programs, but helping the economy recover is not one of them. In the long run, higher government spending makes the economy worse. This may seem heretical to those ...