Many in Washington are hoping for a so-called "grand bargain" between President Obama and the Republicans to thwart a looming budget crisis. Daniel Mitch­­ell isn’t one of them.

Mitchell, an economist with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, predicts that any "grand bargain" agreement would almost certainly end up raising taxes and wouldn’t constrain government spending. And that would be disastrous for the future of the American economy, Mitchell said at the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation Economic Summit held last week in Ames.

Any budget deal would almost certainly replace today’s debt-financed government with one...