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3/30/09

The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room: U.S. couldn’t even join EU due to debt levels - by Michael O'Brien

For the complete report from The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room click on this link

U.S. couldn’t even join EU due to debt levels - by Michael O'Brien

The United States wouldn't even be eligible to enter the European Union if it wanted to because of its debt levels, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) claimed Thursday. "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).

Note EU-Digest: The EU has always taken fiscal responsibility very seriously, because fiscal responsibility has been essential to creating a better, stronger, more prosperous EU. Unfortunately the US mind-set in general does not possess this fiscal responsibility. Consequently the so-called "free market "philosophy has gone completely out of control. Statistics show that the wages at the bottom of the pay scale are 30% bellow what they were thirty years ago. We seemed to think children would be better off than their parents, but the children of the bottom are worse off!

Noble Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote: "what happened is also that in the United States we have this myth what we call Horatio Algier, a myth that everybody from anywhere can become president, wealthy, etc. The so-called "American Dream". And there are examples of that, but the statistics are against you. Statistics today show that the likelihood, if you are at the bottom, is that your children will also be at the bottom. Horatio Algier is becoming less and less true. And actually less true in United States than in some European countries."

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