US President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan has been condemned as “the road to hell” by the Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek. The Czech Republic currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.
The US plans to spend nearly US$2 trillion to stimulate the US economy and has been critical of some EU countries for not planning similar big spending stimulus packages. Germany has been particularly reticent to splurge out.
Prime Minister Topolanek was reporting back to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on last week’s EU summit. He said EU leaders had been disturbed by calls from the US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner for EU stimulus spending similar to the US’s.
Topolanek said:
“The US Treasury secretary talks about permanent action and we, at our spring council, were quite alarmed at that.
“The US is repeating mistakes from the 1930s, such as wide-ranging stimulus’s, protectionist tendencies and appeals, the Buy American campaign, and so on.
“All these steps, their combination and their permanency, are the road to hell.
“We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the (EU) is the refusal to go this way.
Wednesday’s outburst comes eight days before President Obama is due in Europe for the G20 summit of the world’s developed and emerging economies.
After the summit and a NATO meeting, Obama will fly to the Czech Republic for an EU-US summit, at which Prime Minister Topolanek will represent all 27 EU member states.
EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the EU parliament it was:
“Not helpful … to try to suggest that Americans and Europeans are coming with very different approaches to the crisis.
“On the contrary, what we are seeing is increased convergence.
US officials have so far declined to comment on Topolanek’s remarks.
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Harrison
The thing about the EU is that they always seem to be hanging on by a thread. After the Lisbon vote in Ireland all of the EU leaders were in a panic because their treaty had been rejected by a country’s population. Then I learned that Ireland was the only country where the people voted on this treaty!
March 27, 2009 at 20:29
The Exaggerator
No wonder the Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel crowd is especially interested in playing up this item solely for their own twisted delusions of True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command.
Besides, Mr. Limbaugh has said with his own lips “I hope he [President Obama] famils”–the desideratum hopefully being one of the Great Unwashed seeing “the errors of their ways” in voting for Obama in the 2008 elections and seeing the Last and Only Hope for America Being Reclaimed from Herself in voting Straight Republican starting with the 2010 midterm elections.
March 27, 2009 at 20:46
Tim Neale
@Harrison
Sad but true. The reason no one else was given a vote was because they knew quite a few countries would reject it. France and the Netherlands had already rejected a similar proposal.
March 29, 2009 at 12:13
Tim Neale
@The Exaggerator
I suspect Mr Limbaugh’s definition of patriotism is very different from mine.
March 29, 2009 at 12:15
Harrison
It is a sad reflection on the EU that to allow the people to vote would screw up the plans of pencil pushers in Belgium. I’m not so sure the EU could really survive any true crisis as most of the member states will revert to nationalism.
March 31, 2009 at 17:26