Judd Gregg Goes Full WingNut

Yesterday Judd Gregg said that the United States wouldn't qualify to join the EU right now because of our deficits. Of course he was wrong. But the truth is Gregg has been wrong about quite a lot lately and yet he still gets major airplay on major cable news stations primarily because he was the nominee for Commerce Secretary for about five seconds. Steve Benen over at Washington Monthly takes him down.

It's worth remembering that Gregg doesn't know what he's talking about. The EU offers flexibility to governments that are responding to economic crises -- note to Gregg: we're in the midst of an economic crisis -- and several EU members will run deficits well above 3% this year. Those countries will be expected to lower those deficits in the coming years, which not incidentally, is what the Obama administration plans to do in the U.S.

For that matter, Gregg repeatedly supported, enthusiastically, Bush budgets that ran deficits that were more than 3% of GDP. Gregg did not, at the time, run to the cable networks to whine about it.

But let's also note that Gregg is just popping off in the media a little too much lately. In addition to his confusion about the EU, he also told CNN the other day, "The practical implications of [the Obama administration's budget] is bankruptcy for the United States. There's no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals that are in this budget over the ten-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt, our dollar will become devalued."

First, Gregg is completely wrong. Second, his wildly irresponsible claptrap undermines confidence in the United States on the global stage in the midst of an economic crisis. In other words, by making a series of nonsensical and unsupported claims about our economy, Gregg actually runs the risk of undermining our national interests.

Gregg has been wrong about nearly every major economic challenge of the last couple of decades. If he could take this moment to enjoy a little quiet time, instead of acting like a partisan hack, we'd all be better off.

Its ironic that a man that nobody paid much attention to before now is using his celebrity from being the Commerce Secretary nominee to now use that platform to lob irresponsible accusations at the President who nominated him in the first place. I guess its true when they say no good deed goes unpunished. We can only hope that people see through his facade and notice his hypocrisy from the time George Bush was in office until now.