2023-11-13 07:30:06
The Senate begins its budgetary marathon on Monday with the examination of the Social Security budget with the ambition of sending a “political message” failing to be able to clearly weigh on this text struck by 49.3 in the National Assembly.
Barely recovered from a long week of heated debates on immigration – put to the vote on Tuesday – the senators are launching their usual autumn sequence which will take them until mid-December with the state budget.
They are first presented with the Social Security financing bill for 2024 with a particularity, and not the least: the government, without an absolute majority in the Assembly, has taken responsibility for this text to have it adopted without vote, even sidestepping most of the examination of the articles…
This constitutional weapon activated by the Prime Minister, who resisted motions of censure, allows the government to introduce measures as it wishes, and therefore to turn its back on all the Senate’s proposals if it wishes.
“We are above all in a political approach because it is the only tool we have here“, notes the president of the Social Affairs Committee Philippe Mouiller (Les Républicains). “But as there was no debate in the Assembly, our political message will be amplified“.
Path
At the Luxembourg Palace, parliamentarians oscillate between resignation and hope. “At the time, we might obtain some progress by agreeing with the deputies in a joint committee (meeting following an examination in each chamber, Editor’s note). There, the government is all alone“, worries the socialist senator Bernard Jomier, who denounces “a total regression which occurs at a time when our social finances must be rethought“.
More positive, the ecologist Anne Souyris underlines “that at least here we make democracy live“. “This forces ministers to respond to us, they can no longer hide“, hopes the senator from Paris, just elected.
The Macronist benches being in the very minority in the Senate, the groups on the right and the left risk formulating a similar criticism, at the opening of the debates on Monday (4:00 p.m.): that of a worrying trajectory of the Social Security deficit, set to widen in the coming years.
In this “PLFSS”, the government estimates this deficit at 8.8 billion euros in 2023 then 11.2 billion in 2024. And 17.5 billion by 2027, according to its projections.
“The government is presenting us with a trajectory that is an admission of powerlessness. We plan to leave the social debt to future generations and we admit it, we say it. It’s terrible“, exclaims the general rapporteur for the Social Security budget, Elisabeth Doineau (centrist group).
“Sincerity”
The right and center senatorial majority therefore planned to reject the national health insurance spending target (Ondam) for 2024, set at 254.9 billion euros by the government. A “message” pour “open the debate on the sincerity of the figures presented to us“, says Philippe Mouiller.
On the heart of the bill, the LR and centrist allies have planned a few points of vigilance.
They will therefore propose to postpone until January 1, 2028, “at the end of an experiment“, the reform of hospital financing, through which the government wants to reduce the share of activity pricing (T2A).
A reform judged “rushed” by the senatorial majority, to the regret of a part of the left who saw it as “one of the rare somewhat interesting proposals”, according to Ms. Souyris. “The right only talks regarding the relevance of care, but it does not want to annoy no one and especially not the doctors,” tackles this senator.
The senators also intend to raise “unsaid things” on the question of medical deductibles, which remains the responsibility of the insured when they buy medicines (50 cents per box) or see a doctor (1 euro per consultation).
The senatorial right, which fears seeing the executive increase them, should vote for a measure aimed at forcing the government to consult Parliament before any draft decree on the issue.
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