Podemos defends raising the spending ceiling to ensure expansive Budgets and deploy the tax reform now

Ask to unblock the Housing Law and disable construction companies fined by the CNMC to contract with the administration

MADRID, 24 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The spokesman for United We Can in Congress, Pablo Echenique, has defended the need to raise the spending ceiling to have "expansive" General Budgets for 2023. He has also marked as crucial to deploy a fiscal reform in them, since it depends on it "everything else" such as boosting social spending.

It has also demanded the approval of the new Housing Law and the repeal of the 'Gag Law' before starting the budget negotiation, and warns the PSOE that it would be a "programmatic and ideological error" to agree on "right-wing measures" with the PP , as in the case of increased military spending.

During an interview with Europa Press, Echenique pointed out that the socialist wing has not yet contacted its formation on the spending ceiling, but the confederal group is clear that it must rise to raise, in turn, public investment in the midst of another economic crisis, as a result of the war in Ukraine.

And it is that, as he has argued, Europe and Spain understood during the pandemic that "the public sector should be there" to protect citizens and, now, the context is "identical" and public action should not be "weakened", but deploy "more investment" that is perfectly "viable" if revenues are increased with this progressive tax reform.

In fact, it has revealed that Spain is eight points below the European average of collection and that translates into a decrease in resources for public services between 80,000 and 90,000 million. Therefore, he has called for overcoming that "very perverse" economic norm that postulates less public investment to balance the accounts when there is a lot of room to increase spending and reduce debt at the same time, if large companies and incomes pay more taxes.

He has also reasoned that the solution to this crisis "is not to increase military spending" and they will try to convince the PSOE that "it is not a sensible measure", because Spain "is not at war" but rather is suffering the economic effects of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

Asked whether they could demand more social spending in exchange for raising the defense budget, the spokesperson for the confederal group reasoned that "it is true that mathematically speaking both things can be increased, it is obvious", but at the same time "it is also obvious that If you don't increase military spending you can further increase social spending."

As Sánchez himself already conveyed during the Debate on the Nation, it would be a mistake "to take right-wing measures by agreeing on them with the PP", but it is also a double "error" to give him a "state party charter" when he has been blocking for three years the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary and legitimizes a formation that "is buying a lot of ideas from the extreme right". "Maintaining the fiction that Feijóo is moderate is negative because it is a lie", Echenique has launched.

On the other hand, he has indicated that "no one understands" that the repeal of the 'Gag Law' and the future housing regulations have not yet been approved, which should be unblocked "immediately" before the budgets.

Regarding the first case, he pointed out that they are not far from the final agreement to end this "infamous" and "repressive" law approved by the PP but that it has taken longer since the motion of censure against former president Mariano Rajoy, although there are some "stumbling blocks "What to solve.

Among the elements demanded by the confederal space and other parliamentary partners, he has cited the need to review the sanction for disrespect to police officers because it is now "ambiguous" and can be used "to issue fines when someone looks badly at a police officer" , or the legal responsibility of the organizers of demonstrations when altercations occur.

In housing, Echenique has stressed that they aspire to reduce the 'vacatio legis' when applying the regulation of rental prices, that Sareb cede its flats to the social park of public administrations and permanently prohibit the evictions of vulnerable people No housing alternative. "These are reasonable things (...) we are not asking for the moon," Echenique exhorted.

Likewise, it has slipped that they may propose in the budget negotiation to tighten the Corporation Tax by ten points for large supermarkets and finance with this additional collection a check to help families purchase the basket or apply VAT in private universities with for profit, putting an end to the exemption they now enjoy.

Above all because they are "good ideas" and that is why they were raised in the resolution proposals in the framework of the Debate on the State of the Nation, which the PSOE did not support, although the fundamental element is to achieve a "courageous" fiscal reform and a budget increase of social items. "Everything else can be talked about", he has slipped.

He has also described as "very serious" the fines imposed by the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) on six of the main Spanish construction companies for having altered thousands of public tenders for 25 years for construction and civil works of infrastructures.

In this sense, he has denounced that these companies have sought to "get more money" from the administration that stop going to health and education, for which he supports the prohibition of contracting with these companies that the regulatory body already collects.

However, he has stressed that although this possibility exists, it is a process that is dilated although he defends that it is not "not a bad idea" that these disqualifications to contract with the public sector be accelerated. Therefore, he opens the possibility to formalize some kind of parliamentary initiative in this regard.

In turn, he has asked the PSOE to discuss more within the coalition on the preliminary draft of the new law on Official Secrets. "I know that it is being talked about at the government level, although I also know that there should be more talk. I think that with this it is clear what is happening," he said.

In this way, he has urged to emulate the most modern countries in this matter and has explained that his formation rejects the model that "by default" the documents are reserved matter and are published when "the Government says so". From his point of view, it should be "the other way around": "The majority should be public by default and be classified by an express act of the Government."

He has also defended that the period of automatic declassification of said information "has to go down", given that periods of "four or five decades" cannot be considered, but rather to go to terms between 20 or 15 years, which is a "reasonable" period.

"I believe that our country is of legal age to know what has been done or has not been done by government bodies. And whenever documents are declassified, the safety of the agents is guaranteed, the operations are underway, what is not it has to be known so as not to be able to endanger the State Forces and Security", he has riveted to sentence that the regulation of Official Secrets can be "done well" and not with a "Franco law like the one we have now".