In mid-February, the United Surveys studio, commissioned by the Wirtualna Polska portal, conducted a survey among a representative group of 1,000 Poles on the maintenance or liquidation of social programs introduced by the Law and Justice government, as the PO (opposition ) returned to power after the elections in the autumn of this year.
It shows that almost 50% of respondents are convinced that social programs, with the flagship 500+ and lowering the retirement age, will be liquidated (23.6% of respondents believe they will definitely be liquidated, another 26 .3% think the opposition is unlikely to keep them).
In turn, 45 percent of respondents believe the opposition will maintain social programs after coming to power, but only 20.7 percent believe they will “definitely maintain” them, and another 24.3 percent that they ” are more likely to maintain”, 5.1 percent. respondents chose the answer “difficult to say”.
This belief about the liquidation or maintenance of social programs by the opposition after a possible electoral victory is of course very different among the voters of individual parties, as many as 84 percent. of respondents who support the United Right believe that social programs will be liquidated in this case, while 78 percent. of respondents who support the opposition believe they will be kept.
What does it mean?
It is clear from this survey that more than 50% of Poles believe, however, that if the PO came back to power it would liquidate social programs (if the doubters were included in the right proportions, it would appear that more than 53% of the respondents think).
It should also be taken into account that the study was commissioned and made public by a portal that supported the opposition and attacked the United Right, and yet we have a result that clearly says that most Poles are convinced that after a possible victory of the PO, social programs will be liquidated.
This is probably due to the fact that leading PO politicians have allowed themselves not only to criticize these programs, but also to make statements that directly suggest that after the election victory in 2023, they will decide to liquidate them.
For example, some time ago, in an interview on TVN24, MP Izabela Leszczyna, PO’s candidate for finance minister, blurted out that “the 500 plus program didn’t really improve the quality of life”.
From such a statement it is only one step to the next, since an astronomical amount of more than PLN 213 billion has been spent on the implementation of the “Rodzina 500 plus” program for almost 7 years, and it has improved the quality of life of families raising children, as MEP Leszczyna claims, then liquidation is a logical solution.
In the same vein as MP Leszczyna, Tomasz Grodzki, the Marshal of the Senate, took on the payment of the 13th and 14th pensions, who asked on Polsat News in an interview with editor Rymanowski whether the PO would liquidate these benefits. said “we’re talking to retirees, they don’t want handouts,” so he made a strong suggestion that these extra benefits humiliate even retirees (obviously anything degrading should be eliminated immediately).
Liquidation of social programs
Regardless of what the platform’s leading politicians, including Donald Tusk, say about the future of social programs after the party’s possible election victory, whether they deny or confirm their liquidation, it should be clear to everyone that under the rule of the Platform, these programs are being scrapped because there is simply no money for them in the budget.
Anyway, when the PO was in power, Tusk as prime minister was looking for “buried” money for the Family 500 plus program, suggesting that if he found it somewhere, he’d be the luckiest person in the world to to be able to pay it. to families raising children (in 2014, when Tusk was still Prime Minister, Law and Justice announced this program in preparation for the 2015 elections).
In 2015, then Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz spoke in a similar manner, claiming that the implementation of such a program would burst public finances and put Poland in the situation of an insolvent Greece.
On election night, just after the election results were announced and Law and Justice won such a victory that it would have an absolute majority in the Sejm, Finance Minister Jan Vincent Rostowski famously used the phrase about the fulfillment of election promises of PiS “there is no money and there will be no money”.
However, under the rule of the United Right, there is money, the 500 plus program for almost 7 years from its implementation to December 2022, more than 213 billion PLN was spent, pension increases and the 13th and 14th pension only in the years 2022 -2023 , will cost about PLN 115 billion (more than PLN 44 billion in 2022 and more than PLN 70 billion in 2023).
And despite this, public finances are doing well, in 2023 the revenues of the state budget will have doubled compared to 2015 (this year they will be PLN 604 billion, in 2015 they were PLN 289 billion), and in 2023 only revenue from VAT, higher than all budget receipts in 2015.
False accusations
In addition, the opposition’s allegations that the United Right finances social programs by indebting the state are not true, the public debt-to-GDP ratio at the end of 2022 was lower than at the end of the PO-PSL government (50.3 % and 51.3%). % respectively). ).
When the PO returns to power, the “privatization” of taxes will also return and the VAT gap will be around 25 percent again. (as much as at the end of 2015), and not like at the end of 2021 when it was only 4.3% and, as the “prophet” Rostowski put it, “there is no money and there will be no money”.
And this will be the “judgment” for all social programs put in place by the United Right.
Source: wPolityce