Why is Leterme still in charge?
What is it about Christian democracy and a pathological inability to balance a federal budget? If we must have a prime minister from that party, it’d be nice to at some point have one who doesn’t see it as his god-given duty to triple the national debt by the end of his term.
Dehaene managed to balance the budget, particularly in his second term (though only because Belgium was very close to not being granted membership of the Eurozone otherwise, with our massive public debt amounting to well over 100% of the GDP, courtesy of the Christian democrats in the 1980s), but it wasn’t until the liberals got elected that we actually had a real federal surplus (which, given the fact that they also lowered taxes and expanded social programs, was quite impressive). Verhofstadt actually managed to bring the public debt down to 83.5% of the GDP.1
Not that the Fortis bailout wasn’t a necessary measure2 (and so far, a successful one; I made several euros in the past few days), but since Leterme already managed to restore the federal deficit by fucking up the negotiations regarding the federal reforms and losing the desperately-needed 400 million € from the Flemish regional government because of it,3 promising that “the tax-payer” won’t be asked to “carry the burden” of Belgium’s 5.7 billion € contribution to it is ridiculous.
Yes, our taxes are higher than they are in most countries, but our ridiculously extensive social programs mean that doesn’t matter for the most part. They could be quite a lot higher, and this willingness to just shove stuff on top of our debt stack is going to do a lot more harm to the economic independence of our citizens in the long run than raising income taxes by, say, another 10% possibly could.
But obviously, raising taxes would hurt Leterme’s chances of getting re-elected, and those are low enough as it is, thanks to his pigheaded contempt for Wallonia and a complete inability to come to reasonable compromises.
I guess I should be grateful that gay marriage is still legal, and abortion and euthanasia.4 I voted for the socialists in the last federal election, and for the liberals in the one before that, and this sort of bullshit is exactly why.
The sad part is that many CD&V voters will just blame economic difficulties on immigrants and vote even further to the right next time. And Vlaams Belang is positively Republican.
1 Though in fairness, Dehaene started the trend.
2 Unlike the retarded and not entirely unrelated bailout proposed in the US, which would only have served to ensure President Obama would start up to his eyes in debt, rather than merely up to his chin.
3 The Flemish Minister-President is also a Christian democrat (indeed, it was Leterme himself until last year), so you might be inclined to think that at least they can run regional budgets, if not federal ones. The Flemish budget was drawn up by the Flemish Minister of Finances and Budget, though, who is a liberal.
4 To their credit, I don’t think getting rid of gay marriage is actually part of the CD&V platform. They did block further liberalisation of our euthanasia laws, though, which made them look like asses when Hugo Claus died earlier this year.
Abortion has been a non-issue in the Belgian political discourse for the past few decades, even though those laws could do with some serious review too. Much of the point is moot, though, because we actually have real sex ed, even in the Catholic schools.
Elp said,
October 4th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Judging by our respective countries, no democracy is good with debt, fullstop.
In all countries, be they secular or religious, libertarian or socialist, have the temptation to spend metric assloads of money (often times on massively stupid shit), and at the same time cut the taxes that would have replaced said money. The fact that this is financial suicide doesn’t seem to occur to many of these people until it is too late. There are some noises as to which end should be dealt with, but nobody wants to mess with more than one end, it seems. Nobody says “Hey, let’s pay more taxes for less in the name of responsibility!” No, it’s always “Spending is EVIL because it increases my taxes!” or “We should pay more taxes lest we lose our spending!”
This is not to say that dictatorships are any less retarded with money. Probably more so, why bother to keep your currency worthwhile when you can just ruin it and issue another one?
Cairnarvon said,
October 4th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Our socialist and liberal governments have actually generally been pretty good about fiscal responsibility (though the only real liberal government we’ve had since 1884 is the one my fellow countrymen just voted out of office; see here for pretty colors (the prime minister is always picked from the majority party, though that chart obviously doesn’t represent coalitions like Verhofstadt’s liberal/socialist one). It’s just the Christian democrats who have to ruin things for everyone.
Fortunately, most governments are better (both more competent and more ethical) at managing money than the US is, including most of our Christian-democrat ones. Comparing public debt to the GDP is actually a pretty bullshit way of estimating fiscal health, and the only reason anyone does it is to make the US seem less painfully mismanaged than it is.
Elp said,
October 5th, 2008 at 7:39 am
The GDP comparison is made on the basis that a higher GDP means easier to pay off debts. Since taxes are vaguely connected to GDP, higher GDP means greater government income.
Of course, this also is made on the assumption that at some point people will make the sacrifices needed to actually pay the debt.
Cairnarvon said,
October 5th, 2008 at 8:01 am
It’s also based on the assumption that there are reasonably flat tax rates and that corporations are paying the same taxes individuals are, neither of which has been true even in the US in many decades.