ÖVP-Tax Now

Anyone can make a mistake once. The question is whether it happens to you or if you let it happen. In this respect, what the ÖVP has done is inexcusable: They have driven Austria's budget into the ground in recent years. This must be stated clearly when one sees the need for rehabilitation and considers that, according to Fiscal Council Chairman Christoph Badelt, it will remain enormous for a very long time.

Attributing the whole situation solely to crises would be too simplistic. It is much more than that. The abolition of cold progression, for example: The People's Party celebrated it greatly. However, they did not do what would have been crucial in this context: Just as they stepped on a revenue brake with the abolition, they should have also stepped on an expenditure brake. They failed to do so.

Secondly: Former Chancellor and ÖVP leader Karl Nehammer, along with his then Finance Minister Magnus Brunner, ignored all warnings almost exactly a year ago that the budget was getting out of control. In July, they implemented a "fee brake" and made no adjustments. It was more important to them to appear popular in view of the National Council election at the end of September than to take responsibility for the state.

Thirdly: For years, they, whose party under Wolfgang Schlüssel once proudly declared itself a reform force, have failed to deliver far-reaching changes in pensions. This also contributes to growing deficits.

Now it's time to clean up. The fortune of today's Chancellor and ÖVP Chairman Christian Stocker is that a Social Democrat, Markus Marterbauer, as Finance Minister, is taking care of it. However, people are paying the price. Especially the so-called small ones: Families with many children, for example, have to endure the most painful cuts. They are particularly affected by the elimination of the climate bonus and the suspension of inflation adjustments for subsidies like family allowance in 2026 and 2027. Additionally, fee increases that were not implemented in recent years are now being caught up on all at once, making them all the more severe.

It is outrageous in this context that there is no appropriate contribution from parties in general and the ÖVP in particular: The subsidies for them are only to be frozen in 2026. So, one year less than for families, who are often at risk of poverty or social exclusion and too often truly poor.

This needs to be changed. Namely, through a kind of party tax in the form of a real reduction in party funding, which is already one of the highest in the world relative to the population.

It would be so important for this to be proposed by the ÖVP: For them, it would be compensation for what they are responsible for budget-wise, and for the other parties, it would be bearable. It would also be a signal to the people in Austria that everyone must make an appropriate contribution to the rehabilitation of the state budget, not just those who can least resist it.

Johannes Huber runs the blog dieSubstanz.at – Analyses and Backgrounds on Politics

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.