Finance Minister Keller-Sutter is probably planning another attack on the widow’s pension.
Photo: Christian Beutler (Keystone)
Whether individual taxation, childcare outside the family, an increase in army spending or the counter-proposal to the glacier initiative: the federal government will have to spend billions in additional spending in the next few years.
The accusation from the bourgeois side that Parliament should not “overflow” can be countered: Many of these expenditures are legitimate, in some cases even mandatory in view of the climate crisis or the ongoing discrimination against women in the labor market. One indication of this is that the four projects mentioned are supported well into the bourgeois camp or were launched there.
Karin Keller-Sutter saves, among other things, with the help of cunning that does not hurt anyone enough to go on the barricades.
The new Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter is now faced with the task of presenting a balanced budget in order to comply with the debt brake.
On the one hand, she does this with sly things that don’t hurt anyone enough to go on the barricades. That’s how she speaks Army for the moment less money than planned – although the Federal Council had voted in favor of Parliament’s original, more expensive proposal in June. Or she finances the help for Ukraine refugees through the extraordinary budget.
Financial distress is the “window of opportunity”
Where that is not enough, Keller-Sutter rightly does not shy away from painful measures: it can be assumed that she will make another attempt to cut pensions for childless widows. This is an instrument that not only seems questionable since mothers have also been increasingly involved in working life.
Political strategists speak of a “window of opportunity” in such situations, in which necessity forces one to take measures that would otherwise not be enforceable. There would be a number of other savings approaches: The AHV pays 230 million Swiss francs annually on controversial children’s pensions to pensioners. Federal employees earn significantly more than comparable employees in the private sector.
Anyone who spends money must also be prepared to take unpopular measures. That’s good politics.
Found a mistake?Report now.
– It must hurt too
Because a number of sensible additional expenditures are burdening the federal budget, it is right that the government is taking action elsewhere.