14 December 2007

The Cabinet. New funds for security and information

Tuesday 11 December 2007, The Cabinet.

There was much discussion but very little was approved, in the sense that we failed to agree any new draft bills. Instead, we discussed a number of very important topics, most important of all being that of the Budget law, which has been approved by the Senate and will be presented to the Chamber by this Sunday, and we need to decide regarding which of the texts should be approved. The Chamber parliamentary committees have introduced further amendments and another new governmental amendment will be introduced by tomorrow, which will take into account all of the comments and which will then be put to the vote.

How does this year’s new Budget law look, you ask? It contains both areas of light and areas of darkness, but certainly there are many areas of light, in that it redistributes available resources in favour of the weakest members of society and in favour of development. Certain areas of darkness exist, however, due to the fact the Budget Law must be voted on in Parliament, where there is a very narrow majority in favour of this Government and we have, therefore, been obliged to make a few too many “offerings”.

I would now like to explain what are, in my opinion, the “offerings”. On my Blog, you will find a letter I wrote to the Prime Minister, in which I stated that from now on we must avoid squandering resources in order to satisfy any Tom, Dick or Harry. The Budget Law in itself is a good law. Pity about the dropped threads of submission to one or other blackmail attempt by one or other parliamentarian who would otherwise not have voted.

Here are some of the concessions made: funding for sanitary kennels and catteries, funding to save historic assets from the First World War (and here I was, thinking that it had ended some time ago!), funding to finance a book centre, funding for softening our tap water (it must be tap water though!), funding for an Italian immigration museum, and funding for the Italian accounting body (privately established). Just imagine, the funding to save historic assets from the First World War was detracted from a chapter regarding strategic infrastructure, namely the funding for a draft bill concerning our motorways and railways.

We achieved a lot, but we could have done more. If it is true that the State’s expenses and waste are excessive, then these would have been a good area for making some cuts and, on the subject of cuts, I would like to mention what we of the “Italia dei Valori” Party managed to obtain. We refrained from requesting any funding for some or other grouping and, instead, we requested a cut in the expenses. Here are a few of the expense cuts we managed to obtain.

The repeal of the so-called Mancia (Gratuity) Law, introduced during Berlusconi’s time, which made provision for a fund of 3 million Euro, from which, at the end of the year, every parliamentarian could request a portion on behalf of his constituency.
We requested and obtained a reduction in the number of mountain village municipalities, a reduction in the number of selection panel administrators and a reduction in the number of districts.
We requested that the bulk of these funds be allocated in favour of our forces of law and order, beginning with the payment of overtime pay to policemen and Carabinieri that carry out their duties every day, which was agreed to. It was also agreed that a portion of these funds would go towards increasing the funding for local television stations, those that offer some sort of plurality beyond Rai and Mediaset.

This is the contribution made by the “Italia dei Valori” Party: a reduction in the amounts of waste and the reallocation of funds towards security and information. This is why we would have preferred to see those funds, allocated on a whim to the other twenty or so chapters, rather being put towards security and development.

Whatever the case may be, since we are obliged to sum up the totals, this Budget is the best that we could come up with. Next time, however, the reduction of wastage had better be even clearer, in order to balance the books.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Economy