Keith Devens .com

Nothing in the Instapundit report says it's because of social welfare commitments that France and Germany are in trouble. The other states in the EU are holding to the deficit pact despite the fact that they have strong social welfare policies. The exception does not prove the rule.
What about the deficit the US is building? And yet, your seniors are about to be screwed into paying even more insurance payments when the new medicare bill goes through.
Oh yeah, the US is saving the world and barrelling over the efforts of other countries and international institutions!

Did you read the link on the word "situations" where he quotes from Czech president Vaclav Klaus?

Klaus said the forward motion to a single political entity of 25 European nations "will not change until people start thinking and realizing they are not moving toward some sort of nirvana." The Czech president remains "convinced you cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state."

Asked whether he could see the nation-state disappearing "with untoward consequences," Klaus replied, "That could well be the case. Remains to be seen whether it will be the nominal disappearance or the real disappearance. We could see the scaffolding of a nation-state that would retain a president and similar institutions, but with virtually zero influence. That's my forecast. And it's not a reassuring vision of the future."

Last week, the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg released a 400-page report that found "systematic problems, over-estimations, faulty transactions, significant errors and other shortcomings" in the EU's budget. EU's auditors could only vouch for 10 percent of the $120 billion the EU spent in 2002. It was also the ninth successive year the auditors were unable to certify the budget as a whole.

Europeans are yet to face such "serious underlying issues," Klaus said, because "they are still in the dream world of welfare, long vacations, guaranteed high pensions, and cradle-to-grave social security, and which obviates the imperative need to face" reality.

"The enemies of free societies today are those who want to burden us down again with layer upon layer of regulations," president Klaus explained. "We had that in Communist times. But now if you look at all the new rules and regulations of EU membership, layered bureaucracy is staging a comeback." The EU's 30,000 bureaucrats have produced some 80,000 pages of regulations that the Czech republic and the other European applicants for EU membership would have to adopt.

Sorry to quote so much of the article. But he's arguing that a lot of Europe's problems stem from welfare-statism coupled with unchecked beaurocracy.

What about the deficit the US is building?

Exactly my point! Due to unchecked, irresponsible, and unconstitutional spending by our legislators.