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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJeb Bush: Let’s Keep Spending Down, Like Germany! (Um, Yeah…)
Is he touting his fiscal creds or foreign policy knowledge. Does it matter when he apparently fails either way?
National Memo
Jeb Bush: Lets Keep Spending Down, Like Germany! (Um, Yeah
)
Presidential candidate-to-be Jeb Bush made a rather interesting comment Tuesday during a speech in Berlin, Germany. Bush was speaking at a political party conference for Chancellor Angela Merkels conservative Christian Democratic Union, when he let slip that he thought the United States should try to be more like Germany when it comes to responsible public finances.
However, if the United States were to actually embrace the fiscal policies of Germany, as Bush suggested, this would be branded as nothing less than tax-and-spend socialism which can be demonstrated using data compiled by a prominent right-wing think tank.
MSNBC reports:
Turning to the economy, Bush declared his enthusiastic support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in negotiations and hailed Germanys insistence on austerity measures since the 2008 financial crisis.
. ...
But according to the Heritage Foundations statistics, the United States total government spending as a percentage of GDP is 40.1 percent, with a tax burden of 24.3 percent, and public debt at 104.5 percent of the annual GDP.
Germany, by contrast, has government spending at 44.7 percent of GDP and a tax burden at 37.6 percent, with public debt of 78.1 percent of the annual GDP.
Germany also has mandatory health insurance, which Merkels CDU fully supports and would never dream of overturning. Contrast that with the endless political struggles and right-wing efforts to shut down any such system over here. Indeed, as the newspaper Der Spiegel reported in 2012, Germans cant even understand American conservatives who say they are devoutly Christian, but then deny social benefits and health care access.
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Moliere
(285 posts)In other words, yet another perfect neocon puppet. Yay!
n2doc
(47,953 posts)As opposed to most candidates who hide their support by saying nothing. Could be used against him, if our candidate were one of those who is openly opposed to this....
Ilsa
(61,721 posts)Human101948
(3,457 posts)I'm all for that!
USA $2141 per capita
Germany $558 per capita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure_per_capita
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)...a network of low-risk banks that invest locally, a postal service that offers bank-services, automatic voter-registration upon adulthood, voting on Sundays only, at least 5 major political parties on a national level to choose from, emphasis on public transport, emphasis across party-lines to protect the environment, unions so strong that there wasn't even a need for mandatory minimum-wages until recently, university costs about 100-200 Euros per semester, paid sick-leave, 3 weeks of paid vacation per year, 4 months of paid maternal leave after pregnancy including a legal obligation on part of the company to give her her old job back or one with similar salary...
I don't think that this is what John Ellis Bush has in mind for the US...