Formidable, incredible, fabulous, surprising, or indescribable. These were just some of the adjectives used by the Minister of Finance, Cristóbal Montoro, in the plenary session held on Tuesday in Congress, to describe the situation that, according to him, the economy of our country is experiencing. He challenged the deputies to question the veracity of the numbers that his department publicizes daily, and I challenged him to find a single Spaniard who would be willing to come to the podium to say that things are getting better.
The reduction in the spending ceiling set by the Government for 2015 confirms that the country in which the Minister of Finance lives is not the same as the one in which the administrations closest to the citizen are drowning. This is what happens when meager public funds are managed without listening to the unanimous plea of the Autonomous Communities and City Councils, and when a picture of expenses and income is drawn in a reality parallel to that experienced by those who suffer the consequences of the Government's questionable decisions.
I agree with the analysis made by John Müller when he says that the spending ceiling, the expected revenues, and the deficit are "indicative figures, a letter from the Government to the Three Wise Men, a simple declaration of intentions", a good wish with which the Popular Party intends to offer its kindest face and try to amend in 2015, in the midst of an election campaign, the long road of economic adjustments and cuts in rights decreed alone for three years.
We have become accustomed in this legislature to seeing forecasts evaporate in the face of the evolution of a reality that the Government refuses to record in its accounting until the figures end up imposing themselves. Doubts multiply in this case and, despite the optimistic tone used by the Ministry of Finance, almost all analysts wonder how the Government intends to reduce the public deficit to 4.2% with a tax cut that will not be less than 5,000 million, and, in addition, other open questions arise without answer: the interest on the debt goes down, but its volume increases and the Social Security deficit remains a chimera.
"The era of adjustments is over," said the Minister of Finance. The minister ignores the open scars in the social budgets managed by the Autonomous Communities, silences those who begged him for an effort to continue balancing the accounts of the educational, social, and health system, and also closes with this decision the debate on regional financing since, with the resources that the State will put on the table for 2015, it will not be able to articulate said reform.
We already know what the Government's objectives are for next year, but we do not know the small print. We assume that, for another year, it will ask the Autonomous Communities for an extraordinary effort, so that they are the ones that save Spain's deficit compliance.
The patience of those who do know the real effects of the adjustments that others present with triumphal airs is coming to an end. And the Autonomous Communities, which the State has publicly criminalized and has pointed out as the culprits of the imbalance in public accounts, have already announced that they are willing to fight a Government that has been unable to negotiate a new financing system.
Their inability has condemned and will continue to condemn many territories to make the adjustments that the State Government has already said it will not undertake in its costly and elongated structure. Others will have to face the citizens and explain why neither Health nor Education will have the resources they need to, at least, guarantee a relatively sustainable service.
And, for another year, the smile of the Minister of Finance will contrast with the seriousness on the faces of the councilors of the Autonomous Communities.
*Ana Oramas, deputy of the Canarian Coalition