Who's Going To Be Paying More To 'Defend' The World?

[unhappycamper]

Bloc of E.U. States Seek Budget Freeze
By REUTERS
Published: December 18, 2010

PARIS (Reuters) - Five countries said on Saturday the EU's budget should be frozen until 2020, highlighting a new source of policy divisions that could spark a funding battle between the region's western states and their poorer peers in the east.

Britain, France, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands -- all net contributors to EU coffers -- said in a joint letter that increases in the bloc's communal long-term budget should not exceed the rate of inflation after 2013.

"European public spending can not be exempted from member states' considerable efforts to get their public spending under control," the letter, addressed to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and released by the French presidency, said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron had flagged the call for a budget freeze at a news conference on Friday following an EU summit that, while paving the way for a permanent euro zone financial rescue scheme, pointed up lingering deep internal divisions over how best to tackle the region's debt crisis.

The five states can expect strong opposition from Poland and other emerging European countries when talks between the EU's 27 governments on the next long-term budget, which runs from 2014 until at least 2020, get under way in mid-2011.

[old mark]

1. I guess the US of A will have to defend everyone from everyone else now -

after all, the Chinese are actually building an aircraft carrier (their first) now, so they could attack us...


mark

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Our children and grandchildren.

We just don't have the money to buy "defense" like that anymore. Not even if you raised taxes. The money to subsidize universal defense will come from money borrowed from China -- again.