Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-25-Speech-4-148"
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"en.20100325.34.4-148"2
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"Mr President, allow me to say that it is a pleasure to see you in the chair once again.
Mark Twain observed that, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
The European Union is very good at spending money – at spending other people’s money. It was, I think, Milton Friedman who observed that there are two kinds of money in the world: there is your money and there is my money. We are much more careful with the latter than with the former. That explains what is happening in Europe today.
All of the Member States are looking for budget reductions. In Greece, there is a public sector cut of around 10% being proposed, in Ireland more than 7%, Germany is looking at raising the retirement age, Spain – your country – is looking for savings of 2% of GDP, but our budget here in the European Union continues to rise inexorably. Why? Because there is no link in the European Union between taxation, representation and expenditure, so there is no external constraint from the taxpayers.
It was too much spending that got the world into this mess – too much spending by individuals, too much spending by corporations and too much spending by governments. If, instead of spending these trillions on yet further aggrandisement of our debt, if we had given that back to the people in tax cuts, think what a stimulus effect that would have had."@en1
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