Chega will vote against next year’s state budget proposal as a whole, the party president said this Wednesday, justifying it as “extremely unfair” and “the worst” of the governments of António Costa.
“The Chega parliamentary group will vote against the state budget” in the general vote scheduled for October 31, Andre Ventura said in a statement to journalists at the Assembly of the Republic.
Chegi’s leader considered next year’s budget “extremely unfair”, especially in terms of taxes, and António Costa as “the worst budget since he entered government.”
Andre Ventura made several criticisms of the document, arguing that it also “fails to correct the structural problem of the economy” and is also “unambitious, lacking vision and uncompetitive.”
Ventura accused the government of promoting the reduction of the IRS “not through surpluses and money that the state and government have collected in excess” but “by increasing a number of other taxes on the Portuguese.” and believed that “indirect taxes are the big lie of this state budget.”
“This brutal increase in taxes, especially indirect taxes, is an illusion that the government wanted to hide and that is what is really implied in this state budget, so first of all it is a liar, it wants to deceive the Portuguese,” he argued.
President Chegi noted that “the government has benefited from an extraordinary influx of revenue from inflation and the taxes it levies,” but “even with this surplus and this fiscal margin, it could not avoid raising taxes.”
“It is extremely unfair and, above all, paradigmatic that the PS government cannot, in a year when we have a larger budget gap, in which we benefit from PRR funds, reduce taxes for the Portuguese,” he stressed.
Andre Ventura noted that this budget proposal, unveiled by the government on Tuesday, “updates IRS levels that will benefit some and cross-over increases in taxes that will hurt everyone.”
“It was the one [orçamento] where we had more opportunities, the more we could do, where we could go further, and this is also where it is clear that this is a government without ambition, without vision and, above all, it has no problem continuing to take money from the Portuguese to maintain this model of society,” he criticized.
Regarding housing loans, the Chegi leader said the government chose to “burden taxpayers” rather than “create additional deposits in the bank.”
The proposal for the state budget for 2024, presented by the government this Thursday to Parliament, will be discussed and voted on as a whole on October 30 and 31. The final global vote is scheduled for November 29.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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