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When Did the French Become Better Adherents To Limited Government Than the GOP?

Posted January 24th, 2008 at 1:42pm in American Leadership, Enterprise and Free Markets 0 Print This Post Print This Post

Today’s Financial Times reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s administration plans to freeze public spending for five years “to eliminate its deficit and reduce spending as a share of national output.” While Congress figures out the fastest way possible to deficit spend $150 billion on a stimulus package that history suggests will do nothing, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told FT a global downturn would only “reinforce the goverment’s determination to move swiftly and far with structural reforms.”

The developing French resolve on the size of government comes at a crucial time for the GOP. The House GOP is heading to Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, WV, today and there is a movement among conservative members of the caucus to adopt a year-long moratorium on earmarks. Conservatives argue the move would help repair the party’s damaged reputation on fiscal discipline. There is a growing consensus that now is a make or break time for the GOP to show they are still a party of princile on the issue.

Maybe France’s new leadership can drop by to remind wayward appropriators in the caucus  what real fiscal discipline looks like.

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