What happens when you run out of other people's money?
In France, they are learning the hard way.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
PARIS—There is a country in the European Union saddled with a massive debt pile, rising borrowing costs and governments that collapse in a matter of months—and it’s not Italy.
France, rather, is sliding into a morass that once plagued its southern neighbor. If French Prime Minister François Bayrou loses a Sept. 8 confidence vote on his efforts to rein in the country’s budget deficit with 44 billion euros—roughly $51 billion—in cuts, he will become the fourth head of government to lose his job in a year and a half.
High turnover in the prime minister’s office was once rare in France, a cornerstone of Europe with a political system designed to foster stable governance. In recent years, however, France has entered a vicious cycle: Deteriorating public finances are fueling political fragmentation, which in turn prevents the nation from making hard choices about how to fix its fiscal mess.
Bayrou isn’t expected to survive the confidence vote, which would leave President Emmanuel Macron having to name a new prime minister to form the next government.
The Journal, in a separate piece, noted this:
In France, which hasn’t balanced its national budget in more than 50 years, government spending is around 57% of GDP, compared with 36% for the U.S. The state subsidizes everything from vacations to back-to-school equipment for children, and cities from Dunkirk to Montpellier have made public transit free for residents.
They just can't stop spending -- they've taken an entire storied nation and turned it into a blue-city spendathon, with free everything, because they can. More significantly, they have given millions of illegal aliens a free ride, with free health care, free housing, free education and free everything else sucking the country into bankruptcy.
Which is pretty pathetic for a country run by a former banker who presumably would know how to make hard decisions and balance books.
But it isn't entirely his fault -- the legislature, with its significant hard-left faction, insists on spending more on welfare, social services, and migrant freebies, amounting already to 65% of its entire government spending.
What's 65% when you can have 75% -- just like California's blue city governments see it? It all got worse after the COVID spendathons, and as the Journal noted:
By then, France was in a deep hole. Debt went from €2.2 trillion before Macron was elected to €3.3 trillion, and economic growth flatlined. Macron refused to raise taxes, and he struggled to trim entitlements. He managed to raise the retirement age to 64 by 2030—for an estimated €17.7 billion in savings that year—but only after a bruising battle with opposition parties and widespread protests.
Last year, France was forced into a series of embarrassing corrections to its budget deficit. The national statistics agency widened France’s 2023 deficit to 5.5% of economic output, compared with the government’s forecast of 4.9%. Weeks later, the government had to revise its forecast for its deficit in 2024, raising it to 5.1% of economic output from 4.4%. Ratings firm S&P responded by downgrading France.
The Journal makes a brief mention of government spending on migrants as a problem with the "far right" but it moved on too quickly from that issue, seemingly viewing it as a boutique issue for one faction, when in fact, the far right, meaning, conservatives, are leading in all major polls across Europe, including France. Spending on free migrant health care is reportedly 1.2 billion euros. Free housing for migrants is 1 billion euros. A conservative leader in the lower house of the legislature, according to the Spectator, called for an actual audit of government spending on migrants and the left losts its mind.
James Tidmarsh writes at the Spectator:
The right-wing UDR group in the French parliament, led by Eric Ciotti, has called for a parliamentary commission to calculate the true cost of immigration. Ciotti is demanding a line-by-line accounting of France’s spending on healthcare, housing, education, and emergency aid for migrants, alongside their economic contributions. The French left recoiled instantly and predictably. To move the debate on, the Socialists tabled a no-confidence motion against the Bayrou government, ostensibly over pension reform, but widely seen as a bid to deflect Ciotti’s challenge. In Paris, few are fooled: immigration is the real flashpoint.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left firebrand and founder of LFI, thundered that Bayrou must resist ‘the creeping Trumpism of public life.’ Mélenchon is deliberately missing the point. All the right is asking for at this point is a procedural commission. It would be sober and long overdue. But for the French left, the idea that immigration might be scrutinised like any other line of public spending is intolerable. Much easier to cry racism, scream Trump, and table a motion of no confidence to distract and shut the whole thing down. When something looks threatening, change the subject.
Ciotti’s proposal may be politically explosive, but it is also needed. France’s public finances are in crisis. The deficit stands at €154 billion, and the Bayrou government is scrambling to find €20 billion in immediate cuts just to satisfy Brussels. Voters are being told they must expect austerity. The question of what immigration costs, and what it brings in, is now being posed more forcefully than ever. France’s annual bill for state-funded healthcare for migrants is now over €1.2 billion. Emergency accommodation for asylum seekers and illegal migrants costs around €1 billion a year. Add to that the costs of education, unemployment, integration schemes, housing aid, child support, and criminal justice. The numbers aren’t exactly hidden, but they’re never being added up in one place. And that, of course, is the point.
Which gives a different flavor to the coming no-confidence vote. He makes a convincing case that migrant costs are out of control and taking France down the road to bankruptcy.
The panic now gripping the left is not really about the commission itself. It’s about what might follow. Because if the numbers are bad, the consensus begins to unravel. For years, think tanks have insisted that immigration is a net positive, citing GDP growth and demographic renewal. But these arguments are increasingly threadbare. France has among the lowest immigrant employment rates in Europe, and those in work are often concentrated in low-productivity sectors. Immigrants contribute little in taxes and draw heavily on expensive social services. A recent study by the Observatoire de l’immigration et de la démographie argued that immigration is a long-term fiscal burden, not a benefit at all. They conclude that immigrants leave the workforce earlier than previously assumed, and with much higher dependency needs.
That's a disgusting fiscal picture, laying France low, making it the New Greece or New Italy in the Eurozone except that those countries have managed to get a grip and control their public spending.
France's arrogant rulers thought they were not like those supposedly lazy Mediterranean countries baking in the sun. But in reality, France, with its huge social spending on migrants, might be even worse.
Bad things happen in France when the government goes bankrupt. Look up 1789. And with barbarians at the gate being let in on free rides, the formula for revolution looks well laid out even at this early date, particularly with the repression of the only party that wants to get a grip on migrant spending just by laying it out. The left refuses to lay it out, viewing it as a strictly moral issue, not a policy issue. It looks like the day of reckoning for Macron and the leftists he goes along with is now coming.
Image: Evan Bench, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed
