As expected, opposition parties do not like the draft 2024 budget that the Council of Ministers approved this morning. Some measures are worrying, such as workplace interventions deemed inadequate, cuts to local government, cuts to funding for healthcare, schools and universities, and increased VAT on sanitary pads and early childhood products.
Scotto (Pd): “We need investment in business”
“A maneuver without ambition, without vision and, above all, that excludes from the horizon the most important emergency of this country, namely the purchasing power of those working and those who have lost weight in Italian society in recent years.” This was announced by Democratic Party deputy Arturo Scotto. “Look at the Eurostat data that tells us about a doomsday scenario – he continues: 63 percent of Italian men and women do not make it to the end of the month. An unstructural intervention in the tax wedge that cannot even compensate for the increase in inflation and the repeated postponement of the contractual rights of all public employees. In this respect it is different.” “There is a need for an initiative: As long as the amnesty is satisfied with the tips distributed like a shower, a serious investment in business, starting from the minimum wage, and the renewal of contracts,” he said.
In the region of Nazareth, cuts to local governments are also worrying because they risk further impoverishing regions, municipalities and provinces: “Perfectly timed compared to the Italian Municipalities that are starting the 40th National Assembly of the ANCI in Genoa today,” explains Stefania Bonaldi Elly Schlein’ In the secretariat of the responsible for public administration, professions and innovation – previews of the financial maneuver describe a review of spending of 600 million a year for local governments, 350 paid by regions, 200 million paid by municipalities and an annual cut of 50 million for the provinces”.
Democrats also criticize the possibility of increasing VAT on sanitary pads and baby diapers: “According to the drafts circulating – MP Lia Quartapelle writes in X – the government has decided to raise cash for sanitary pads and baby products, reducing VAT to 10% “It is incomprehensible to target essential products for women and children at a time when inflation is hitting low-income earners.”
Barzotti (M5S): “Women’s Option turns into discrimination against women”
“The draft Budget Law we have is disarming because of the emptiness of its content,” thunders 5 Star Movement MP Valentina Barzotti, if it were not for the variety of new taxes that have emerged. Social protection measures are empty, no innovative character, no investment in job security but a mockery. A new cut in the tax wedge is not available: instead of preparing a structural measure, the measure already made in the previous maneuver was approved and only for 2024. Every year, with no other billions of dollars available to refinance it, workers will see their paychecks “weak” by as much as 100 euros a month. Women’s option still remains, but increasingly becomes “discrimination against women”: in addition to the restrictions introduced One year ago – unemployed, carer or 74% disabled – the age requirement rises to 61. Frankly, in an amount that makes exit difficult. In fact, an improved Fornero law was born in the sense that the criteria became even more stringent. “Simply put, it’s a disaster for our nation’s hapless workers.”
Italia Viva: “More taxes and more poverty”
Enrico Borghi, chairman of the group in the Senate, on behalf of Italia Viva, and senator Silvia Fregolent speak: “According to Borghi writing on her social networks, the budget bill foresees an increase in VAT on children’s products and sanitary pads, an increase on cigarettes, which ultimately consists of mini bonuses that risk being ineffective.” a tangled jungle, an increase in the tax rate for short term rentals, more money for private healthcare, fewer rebates for those looking to retire, a very weak reduction in the wedge Fiscal They promised heaven and earth, in the end they only have broads without the slightest vision we find plains, but only more taxes and more poverty,” he concludes.
“The Meloni government’s budget bill – he attacks Fregolent – is useless when it goes well, and when it goes bad it raises taxes on Italians. From milk powder to small panels to dry rents to mobile phones, it certainly doesn’t fight inflation. Oil remains too expensive: Italians pay out of pocket and privately.” “consumption taxes are left untouched. So when Istat said that 63% of Italians did not arrive until the third week of the month, I will not say that we Salviniana expected a flat tax memory as a trumpet, but I expected them at least not to increase taxes on citizens. Instead they did the opposite”.
Magi (+Europa): “A depressing and demoralizing maneuver”
+Europa secretary Riccardo Magi explains that “the reading of the draft budget law provides us with an overwhelming and even demoralizing manoeuvre: support is lost in thousands of streams and in a non-strategic way; even the reduction of the contribution margin is used in favor of renewal of contracts in the private sector as well. These are, among other things, Next is the bonuses and tax breaks, financed for a single year and financed by debt: This means that in less than a year we will find ourselves with a debt again. These need to be refinanced. All this deficit, these debts will fall on the shoulders of the new generations. “There is no intervention in education, training, innovation, industry, that is, growth.”
Verdi Sinistra: “Just a series of pinpoint interventions”
Nicola Fratoianni, national secretary of the Italian Left, said: “The government’s maneuver does not respond to the country’s emergencies. They had to rebuild a welfare system that could protect people, they had to think about increasing wages and pensions; they ‘wanted’ to reduce inflation.” The Green Left Alliance parliamentarian is more then he examines in depth the substance of the advances passed from hand to hand in the morning: ‘As usual – he adds – the government’s maneuver was late; an imaginary maneuver that lasted for days without official data and figures. But we know one thing: We cannot meet the urgent needs of the country in an environment where inflation is consuming the purchasing power of families and salaries and pensions are still at a standstill. That’s what they should be striving for, and that’s exactly what they’re not doing. This is not true. The SI leader then adds that there is no money in this country: The important thing is that where there is great wealth and great income, there is no fair redistribution to finance the general interests of Italians. Fratoianni concludes that “one has the impression that there is no vision, but a series of point interventions are built to achieve a micro-consensus element, but will not change the economic and social dynamics of our country even one bit.”
The left points to a lack of investment in schools and universities. MP Elisabetta Piccolotti explains that “This budget law is a wrong law: it cuts health, but it also cuts education, a sector where larger investments are required. Italian schools must remain open even in the afternoon, there it wants” increase in staff, increase in teachers’ salaries, pnrr The increase in ATA staff who have to carry out the projects, there is no trace of all this in this budget, there is not even an adjustment in salaries according to inflation, so we also have a big problem of the right to education, which concerns both the school and the university: it is about expensive books, because Italian families are now so It cannot cover high expenses and there is no investment in this sense. It also concerns university students, because in recent months we have seen thousands of students take to the streets with their tents to report that they are having difficulty paying rent. Well, the advocate of the Green Left Alliance continues, there is no answer in this sense, either in the field of new public university dormitories or in legislation that would actually limit the high rental costs in the private sector. Moreover, there is another problem facing universities; If ordinary university funding were to be cut, it would be a sensational own goal. Italy has too few graduates to compete in Europe, and this government, instead of trying to solve this problem, is doing everything to ensure that university somehow becomes a privilege for the minority, something only the ruling classes and ruling class families can afford. It’s a really bad sign.
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Source: Today IT
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
