Bailing Out the European Union

It was bad enough when President Obama bamboozled Congress into passing a Stimulus bill that didn't produce any jobs, then increased the federal budget deficit, then bailed out the big U.S. banks, and then appointed a Jobs Czar who creates jobs only in China. But it's over the top when Obama told the European Union Council President and the European Commission President that "the United States stands ready to do our part" to bail out Europe.

Bailing out Europe is absolutely not any "part" of "our" duty; we've already bailed out Europe more times than it deserves. Obama didn't give any specifics, but he was probably referring to recent proposals to pour more U.S. cash into the International Monetary Fund (known as the IMF) to bail out Europe.

In December, the IMF board of governors adopted a proposal to double its resources from its current $375 billion to $750 billion. Of course, other IMF member states thought that was a nifty idea since it would mean that the United States would have to pony up another $100 billion in addition to our present $108 billion stake in the IMF. The U.S. is the biggest contributor to the IMF; we pay about 17% of its budget.

Senator Jim DeMint says we should just say "no" to Europe, and has filed a bill to defund our IMF contribution. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has introduced a similar bill in the House. We the people who end up paying for IMF donations only found out through Freedom of Information Act requests and an audit of the Federal Reserve System, that trillions of dollars of emergency loans have already been given to foreign banks. Obama has no business using U.S. taxpayers' dollars, through the IMF or the Federal Reserve or any other secretive agency, to bail out foreign banks.

Listen to the radio commentary here: