The draft state budget for 2024, handed over to the Riigikogu for processing last Wednesday, does not contain anything surprising. The most important document of failed finance has been talked about over and over again. But this story prompted the writing of a cascade of lies, which coalition representatives present as a refrain.
The numbers speak for Ratas
The story of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and the leading politicians of the Reform Party and Estonia 200 that the governments of Jüri Ratas since 2016 are to blame for the current cuts and tax increases is a blatant lie. Numbers speak another language. Even before the start of the corona pandemic, in 2019 the government sector budget was in nominal surplus with 34 million euros, or 0.1 percent of GDP.
The debt burden increased in 2020 and was due to the corona crisis: additional money needed to be directed to health care, the economy and local governments in order to overcome the crisis wisely and safely. It also succeeded, because after the short-term decline during the pandemic, the Estonian economy recovered much faster and stronger than in the rest of Europe.
In addition, the reform parties forget that they have held the portfolios of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance since 2021. Since before the last Riigikogu elections, the fire was extinguished with gasoline, it is appropriate to repeat the proverb: “Your own scumbags beat you.” Annely Akkermann, the former Minister of Finance, admitted after the Riigikogu elections that spending was done with pleasure and the state budget was deliberately let into the red by a billion. Before the elections, of course, it was said that the state of the state’s finances was good and there was no reason to worry. Therefore, the party was held by the Reform Party with an open bill.
Criticism of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
In fact, cuts and tax increases could not exist at all, if the “financial experts” in the government would use the common sense of the peasants. Why the hell is it necessary to push through the income tax reform of the squirrels, which costs 500 million euros a year? After all, the average working person remains poorer as a result.
