Your Kind Aren’t Welcome Here

The current President and much of the Democrat leadership appear to have an affinity for Europe. For example, they insist European healthcare be a model and justification for their meddling in US medical markets. Generally, President Klink’s rhetoric about “what we owe to each other” is founded on the same principles as Europe’s various versions of social democracy.

Unfortunately, facts tarnish the Democrats’ hopey-changey dreams. Their new New Deal socialism is too progressive by European Union standards. Former Obama cabinet nominee Judd Gregg remarked this week:

"We won't even be able to get into the EU if we wanted to," Gregg said this morning on MSNBC, "because our government is so large and so huge."

The European Union's Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) adopted in 1997 requires a budget deficit to be less than three percent, and requires a national debt beneath 60 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

I looked it up, just to see if Gregg may have been grandstanding. Nope. By the CBO estimate (pdf), Barry’s budget creates a 2010 deficit equal to 9.6 percent of GDP. The accumulated debt—which Barry will remind you is not all his fault—rises to 82 percent of GDP in 2019.

Note also that the debt Obama elected to inherit, at the end of 2008, was only 41 percent of GDP. For all his whining into the rear-view mirror, Barry wants to double the debt. If he continued the so-called “failed policies of the past”, our 2019 debt would be only 56 percent of GDP.

“Only” 56 percent of GDP.

Oh, how our metastatic government has changed perspectives…

Anyhoo, here’s what the Maastricht Treaty required of the nations that formed the European Union:

Countries were required to have annual budget deficits not exceeding 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), public debt under 60 percent of GDP, inflation rates within 1.5 percent of the three lowest inflation rates in the EU, and exchange-rate stability.

At least the current crew meet the inflation and stability requirements. Until the pent-up inflation resulting from the recent Treasury and Federal Reserve money-printing looniness is unleashed.

It seems Barry wants to out-Euro the Europeans. He hopes to adopt similar rules, and puff them up to fit the stereotype of oversized Americans. So far, the lefties have not explicitly asked to join the Euro club. Maybe they know Europe wouldn’t let us in.