The PD and public spending cuts: lessons for the right
You could all see the puffin in the Chamber:
You could see the data here:
and therefore you might have had an idea of the consistency of Schlein's recriminations (may the Lord preserve it for us!).
Now, it is a fact that I have a propensity for Meloni simply because at the time she proved to be a person open to listening (the other certainly wasn't the type to come to a #goofy), and I remain grateful to the dear memory of Antonio Triolo who introduced it to me a long time ago. I also think that she is grateful to me for not disturbing her (Borghi thinks about it anyway, no point in duplicating). However, since amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas , I note that in this case neither of the two contenders, neither the one who triumphed according to the right-wing media, nor the one who triumphed according to the left-wing media, told the exact truth.
Schlein's lie (may the Lord preserve it!) is all in the graph above, so I wouldn't go back to it.
Meloni's inaccuracy was pointed out to me by a member of my staff (yes, we arrogant narcissistic individualists tend to work in teams: see how strange the world is!) and actually strengthens Meloni's argument. The problem is therefore not that Meloni lied as Schlein lies (may the Lord preserve her!) when she denies the obvious responsibility of her party in the overkill of Italian healthcare (clearly visible in the graph above). The problem is that he could have sprinkled salt on the ruins of the Schlein (may the Lord preserve it!), but for some reason he didn't.
To explain to you what I am referring to I have to go into legislative aspects.
What the two contenders (I say this so as not to offend one of the two, the other is a witty person) refer to in their exchange is paragraph 71 of article 1 of law 23 December 2009, n. 191, Provisions for the formation of the annual and multi-annual state budget (aka financial law 2010)
that is, the provision that in the second budget law (this was the name of the budget law) of the Berlusconi quater government anchored financial expenditure for the following three years to the 2004 values.
However, I believe that, thanks, for once, to the failure to use the technique of normative references, against which my colleague Serafino Pulcini had rightly railed in the 12th legislature with his interesting proposal for a constitutional law on the drafting and simplification of regulatory acts , I missed a detail.
Which?
The fact that the spending cap was not adopted in 2009, as Mrs Schlein says (may the Lord preserve her!).
It was adopted here:
He says: "And what is this stuff?".
I'm here to serve you! This is paragraph 565 of article 1 of Law 27 December 2006, n. 296, Provisions for the formation of the annual and multi-annual state budget (aka 2007 financial law). It would be, so to speak, the first budget law of the Prodi bis government.
In short: the cap on spending on public health personnel was adopted by Prodi, when he was prime minister of the second Prodi Government, and not by Meloni, when he was Minister for Youth (I didn't say "youth"!) of the fourth Government Berlusconi.
My inexhaustible Barmherzigkeit prevents me from pointing out how ridiculous it is to attribute the paternity of a health measure to a Minister for Youth ("she created this specific problem!"); It also prevents me from raging about "and certainly not us!": why, was Prodi a fascist? According to the categories of this blog yes, but according to the categories of anti-fascism professionals I would say no: it seems to me that he was from the PD, that is, from the "us" to which Schlein was referring (may the Lord preserve her!).
There is so much to say, but I'll stop here.
So what is the moral of the story?
I would say that there are at least two: the first, it seems clear to me, is "the right must not do what the left has done". The Berlusconi Government was certainly wrong in extending, in the name of "Europe asks us", the wicked provisions of the Prodi Government. Warning: here I am not referring to the fact that procyclical policies are wrong (not only in recession, but especially in recession). Here I am referring to the fact that doing what the PD does is still wrong and would remain so even if it were the right thing! In short: I reiterate my heartfelt appeal to ideology.
EU = PD = things that are not mentioned at the table, period.
But if you make the most of all the nefarious things that the PD proposes and propose the cuts in healthcare, then when Europe arrives and deposes you ( as the cobbler who looks like Mister Bean confessed ) you cannot expect the people to warm up much more in your favor.
And the second moral?
Well, the second moral is that the staff must be built carefully. None of us could make alone the infinite decisions we have to make in a unit of time. It follows that the quality of those who help you take them is crucial.
And this is coming from someone who always told you that he would rather lose alone than win in company! Yet, behind every speech I make there is a lot of work, not only mine, but also that of a carefully chosen team: because, although I hate you, I would like everything except to disappoint you.
Strange world, isn't it?
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/il-pd-e-i-tagli-alla-spesa-pubblica.html on Fri, 26 Jan 2024 17:35:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.