Issue Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Innsbruck (OTS) – The ÖVP finance minister qualified the budget that he had drawn up before the Corona crisis as something for the rubbish bin. It should come as no surprise that the opposition parliamentarians do not want this waste paper.
What is said pecks. Politicians in particular need to know that. In mid-March, ÖVP Finance Minister Gernot Blümel stated in the Federal Council: “I threw the budget speech into the rubbish bin.” Whether the corona crisis and its financial consequences for the state no longer apply, which was predicted before the pandemic. As a matter of fact. Even if it has not yet reached most entrepreneurs, the promised monetary support and the other lockdown-related costs were not included in the price. Because at that time they could not be priced in. No one criticized ÖVP finance minister Gernot Blümel at the time. Now it is different. Many weeks later, Blümel expected parliamentarians to approve of something outdated – and to issue the government with a blank check for 28 billion euros. With the yes to an over budget authorization in this amount. The head of the department should not be surprised that the opposition members are not satisfied with “waste paper”. This is not about Pipifax.
Nobody expects him to update the budget in every respect down to the decimal point; even a finance minister is not a clairvoyant. But he could and should have provided an estimate. He submitted them to the EU Commission at the end of April and withheld them from MEPs.
At one press conference after the other, the Chancellor and his ministers announced help – a billion there, a few billion there. How much the expenditure increases as a result, how much the tax revenues decrease, as well. Telling the people’s representatives about the state budget matters is no goodwill of those in power; They have budget sovereignty, which is the duty to control.
The debate about the government’s budget deficit once again reveals another deficit – the way governors deal with mandataries. Coalitionaries of all stripes have always seen them as the doers of their actions. Those of the government parties are; so do the current ones. Knowing that waste is what they decide on Thursday, they do it. The objections of the SPÖ, FPÖ and NEOS may be annoying to them, but they are legitimate. The High House is no nonsense, as a former finance minister once stated. It is corrective. If the Greens were still in opposition, they would judge it that way. They once held parliamentarianism high.
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