The Sumar Plurinational Group is working to achieve the general state budgets at all costs without extending the current ones, approved in 2023. “We are not satisfied with knowing that the budgets can be extended if there is no parliamentary majority,” assured Jorge Pueyo, deputy spokesman of the group, during a press conference this Tuesday in Congress.
From Sumar, they explained that although they are aware of the difficulty of carrying out the budgets, for them it is essential to have them. Pueyo stressed that now is the time to negotiate with the partners, although “it is difficult to be optimistic about the parliamentary balances that exist”, although the second vice president of the government, Yolanda Díaz, showed last week her “conviction” that they were going to move forward.
Sumar and the PSOE had already clashed last year over the impossibility of making new budgets, at that time under the pretext of the electoral call in Catalonia. While the socialist part of the Executive opted for the extension, considering that it preferred this option to “the extension of the accounts of the Popular Party”, Sumar criticized the decision in the mouth of the parliamentary spokesman Iñigo Errejón, for “having laid down arms at a time of great weariness of citizens with politics.
On the other hand, on the day that the extension of the vote on the deficit path scheduled for next Thursday was announced, those in the ranks of the government’s minority partner consider it good news since everything indicated that it was not going to prosper. . and gives them more time to negotiate with the investiture partners. In this sense, Aina Vidal, also deputy spokesperson for the parliamentary group, placed particular emphasis on the fact that the new spending ceiling is part of the increase in economic sovereignty and the decision-making capacity of the autonomous communities.
In a clear nod to the investiture partners, Vidal assured that the deficit path is part of the direction that the Government must take towards the decentralization of resources, especially towards the autonomies. All this after the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, explained last Monday that the spending ceiling included an additional 500 million euros for Catalonia, in an attempt to put pressure on Junts.
Regarding the content of the budgets, the group’s spokesmen assured that they will bear Sumar’s mark, highlighting some of their main proposals, which they presented last week during an appearance by Yolanda Díaz with all the ministers of the coalition. Among the most important are the family allowances for parenthood, which Sumar wants to reach 200 euros, the extension of the birth permit up to 20 weeks, the promotion of public oral health, the subsidization of glasses and contact lenses, tax justice and what they consider “fundamental in the framework of what they have been demanding”: having a home to live in and not to speculate.
