The more the candidates of the Platform for Ministers in the new government say publicly, the more it becomes clear that the potential coalition partners of PSL, Ruch Hołownia and Left will have to promise deep budget cuts and even an increase in the tax burden.
New Platform MP Andrzej Domański, as well as Donald Tusk’s chief economic advisor and the party’s candidate for Minister of Finance, answered questions from editor Rymanowski on Radio Zet and strongly stated that he is against maintaining the zero VAT rate on food, as well as against the extension of credit holidays in 2024.
MP Domański used rather bold arguments in both cases, stating that since the Platform promised to increase teacher salaries by 30%, money for this purpose must be found somewhere.
Morawiecki’s designs
In both cases, the current Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawicki, announced that he would submit appropriate bills to the Sejm (with regard to credit holidays, the government accepted this bill and referred it to the Marshal’s staff), expecting swift action would be undertaken so that it could enter into force on January 1 next year.
Maintaining a zero rate on food throughout the year will reduce revenues from this tax by about 10 billion zlotys, while the so-called Loan Holidays indirectly weigh on the state budget by reducing income tax revenues (including bank taxes) paid by banks, because the costs are borne directly by banks that provided loans in PLN for the first apartment for young people.
The nervous search for sources of funding for the pay increase for teachers announced by the Platform looks very strange, because when Donald Tusk publicly announced this, he claimed that everything had been carefully calculated and the money for this purpose was guaranteed.
KO election promises
The statements of the candidate for Minister of Finance Andrzej Domański confirm the approach to fulfilling election promises by Platform politicians.
Let us recall what then-Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and then-Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said in the 2014 election promises during overheard conversations in the “Amber Room” restaurant.
Sikorski, referring to the then ongoing election campaign in connection with the parliamentary elections in the autumn of 2015, said, among other things, mockingly: “Promising twice is keeping once”, and Rostowski went even further and said: “political promises only bind those those who believe in it do not believe.”
So during the election campaign you can promise what the strong will put on your tongue, because if after winning the elections you have such an approach to election declarations, you know that they will not be implemented.
Country budget
Let us not forget that in early November, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Minister Elżbieta Rzeczkowska, while denying information about the “budget hole”, said that during the eight years of the Law and Justice rule, state budget revenues increased by as much as PLN 305 billion. , i.e. by 105% compared to 2015.
Let us also recall that during the eight years of the PO-PSL government in the period 2008-2015, budget revenues increased by only PLN 35 billion (budget revenues in 2008 amounted to PLN 253.5 billion, and in 2015 PLN 289 .1 billion PLN), and in 2015 – 2023, by as much as the above-mentioned 305 billion PLN (from 289.1 billion PLN to 594.6 billion PLN).
At the same time, public debt to GDP rose by as much as 7.5 percentage points to PLN 51.3 billion during the PO-PSL government, while during the Law and Justice government it fell by 3.6 percentage points to PLN 48.4 billion . % GDP.
They also recalled that the 2024 budget, whose revenues are planned at PLN 684.5 billion and expenditure at almost PLN 850 billion, includes funds for the most important social programs and areas of our lives.
For the Family 800 plus program an amount of no less than PLN 64 billion, for the indexation of pension and disability benefits an amount of no less than PLN 45 billion, for the 13th and 14th pension an amount of PLN 29 billion. for healthcare expenditure (including expenditure from the National Health Fund), as much as PLN 191 billion, and as much as PLN 158 billion for defense expenditure, including about PLN 100 billion from budget funds and almost PLN 60 billion from the Armed Forces Support Fund, established on the basis of the Financing of the Armed Forces Act of our country.
There is therefore no substantive basis for disseminating information about the budget gap or the difficult situation of public finances, because things are much better than at the end of the PO-PSL government in 2015.
There is also no basis in the current state of public finances to scare Poles with the need to cut social programs introduced by the Law and Justice government, to limit national defense spending, or to make strategic infrastructure investments, such as nuclear power plants, the Central Communications Port, or expansion of the container port in Świnoujście.
Liberal politics of PO
In this situation, the announcements of the candidate for Minister of Finance Andrzej Domański about abandoning the zero VAT rate on food or credit holidays seem like the Platform’s return to pursuing an extremely liberal policy.
I wonder how politicians from PSL, Ruch Hołownia and the left will react to these announcements, since they want to form a government coalition with the Platform and already at this stage have to endorse steps that contradict their election manifestos.
Source: wPolityce