NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Barack Obama promised universal health care and a mass conversion to green energy when he launched his presidential campaign. On that frigid February day in 2007, the economy was growing at a 2.8% clip. Obama stuck to the same promises a year later when he won Iowa, as the housing market was slumping into recession. And energy and health care were the twin pillars of his acceptance speech in Denver, 18 days before Lehman Brothers collapsed.
As one of the most disciplined, on-message politicians of our time, President Obama hasn't wavered from his audacious plans to remake entire business sectors. But when wavering is what the U.S. economy seems to do best these days, the President confronts a new question: Does his own agenda threaten to choke off the economic recovery that he also promises -- and that will define much of his legacy? Both of his legislative campaigns for the fall, health-care reform and the cap-and-trade plan to curb carbon emissions, could put new burdens on a weak economy. Even supporters of the initiatives fear a GDP hit. "It's a big gamble," says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, a proponent of health-care reform, about that initiative's impact on growth. - CNN Money
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