Room turns into redshanks from juggling budget cuts
'Targets', 'terms of trade problem', 'priorities': the Ministry of Education uses all kinds of different words for cutbacks. The House of Representatives is getting crabby and asks for clarification.
The House of Representatives sends the Ministry of Education a list of 205 'factual questions' about the 2017 budget. Some questions are irritated: the government uses synonyms for the word cutbacks, which do not make the budget clearer.
Alternative names
And so the House wants clarity from the minister: "Can you provide an exhaustive list with all alternative names for cutbacks, targets or tax measures that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science uses or will use for this and subsequent budgets?"
In addition, the MPs want to know exactly how much cuts will be made in the different sectors of education in the coming years. Can the minister provide a clear overview of this? And can she rule out the possibility that before the budget discussion in the House of Representatives, another financial corpse will come out that no one had taken into account?
Economize
Perhaps the irritation started with the 'terms of trade problem': a problem in which wages go up, but the budget for the ministries does not. In order to still be able to pay the higher wages, the Ministry of Education must cut more than 250 million euros to complete the budget.
Distrust
It makes the room suspicious. When presenting its budget, the ministry said it wanted to invest more in education, didn't it? Had the minister forgotten to mention that austerity measures are also being taken, which will consume a large part of the extra budget?
So the MPs will look for something behind everything. They see, for example, that fewer HBO students are expected, perhaps partly because the basic grant has been abolished. As a result, universities of applied sciences receive less subsidies. As it looks now, this loss in 2020 will not be offset by the proceeds from the loan system. Will the higher professional education sector improve as the minister suggests?
The House of Representatives is awaiting the minister's answers before debating the Education budget.
