Neither a pandemic, nor the conflictive coexistence in the common Cabinet, nor the polls against it, nor the bobbin lace to which he is constantly forced so as not to lose parliamentary support. Nothing has been able for the moment with the poor iron health of the Government, which is overcoming obstacle after obstacle. That of this Thursday was no less: the endorsement of Congress to pave the way for the processing of the State Budgets, the check that the Executive needs to guarantee its survival until the next elections. The vote once again showed that, as long as the political circumstances do not change, a more than comfortable majority in the House (188 votes this time) is willing to support the left-wing coalition. Which is not to say that everyone is happy with the government’s attitude. The complaints of the allies were heard in the Congress, the most energetic that of ERC, which says that the Executive is behaving with “arrogance”.
In the first days of September, when the new political course began, the PNV spokesman in Congress, Aitor Esteban, predicted: “There will be Budgets, in fits and starts, but I think there will be.” The “in and out” is already the usual way of life of the Executive, who this Thursday could have a small party in Congress, with the president, most of his ministers and the deputies of the two government groups standing ovations to the head of the Treasury, María Jesús Montero, for her successful defense of the Budgets before the Chamber. The applause erased the echo of the reproaches that some of the Government’s allies had thrown into the wind in the hemicycle before allowing the accounts to continue their processing. And they made it clear that the forces of the groups that wanted to overthrow the project are still scarce: 156 votes, an even more heterogeneous sum in which the entire center bloc and the national right entered, together with the Junts’ shock independence movement. and the CUP.
The accounts have passed the most difficult stage, that of the parliamentary endorsement of their processing, but there is still more than a month to go for their final approval. Now they will have to be negotiated chapter by chapter, sent to the Senate and brought back to Congress to vote on before the end of the year. Since Wednesday, when the budget debate began, all the groups that came to the aid of the Government against the seven amendments to the entire opposition warned that their position is not a “blank check” and that work will still be needed your final support. ERC notified it and the two Basque nationalist groups ratified it, as well as the Valencian and the Galician, the Cantabrian regionalist, Nueva Canarias and Teruel Existe.
After listening to it so much, the Minister of Finance begged this Thursday: “It is not necessary to repeat it any more, we are clear about it. We know the parliamentary arithmetic ”. Montero, without entering into dialectical crossroads, was sympathetic to everyone’s requests, from those demanding measures more heeled to the left to the specific demands of territorial groups.
ERC did not demand so much concrete questions as a change of attitude. Its spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, once again claimed the quota for Catalan, Galician and Basque on audiovisual platforms, which the PSOE has promised to negotiate with the independentists in a future law. “Nowhere is legislation against the languages of your own country,” protested Rufián. But his main reproaches, with the forceful brand of the house, had a more political background. The ERC spokesman argued that the Government uses fear of the right – “Its engine is fear,” he sentenced – to tie up its parliamentary support. And that circumstance allows him to live now what he defined as “a haughty moment, an alpha moment.” “Pride is a bad counselor,” was her first warning. Then came a second: “They are starting to get too many people pissed off.” And still a third: “Calculate your strength well, I do not know if you have gasoline for so much travel.”
Rufián’s admonitions passed to the always diplomatic tone of the PNV. His deputy Idoia Sagastizabal was much more critical of the right for his proposals for tax cuts, a “chimera”, he said, typical of “healers” and “populists.” This did not prevent him from stressing that his party is dissatisfied with the investments of the State in the Basque Country and that his position in the final vote on the Budgets will depend on the allocation of more funds for the Basque railway network.
On the left, EH Bildu deputy Oskar Matute reinforced another of the complaints raised by Rufián: the absence of a “fairer” tax reform. The minister referred to the report that will be presented at the beginning of the year by the committee of experts to which the Treasury has commissioned a proposal. Matute went deep into the wound not yet closed in the Cabinet due to the differences between PSOE and United We Can on the labor reform. “If they do not repeal it, they will lose the elections and it will be their responsibility that the right governs,” he pressed the minister. Matute expressed his suspicion that the Executive “intends to request permission from the employer” and only undertakes a “partial repeal.” In that case, the nationalist spokesperson added, “perhaps they will lose the support of the left-wing groups.”
#Budgets #pass #complaints #members #grow #Congress