Innsbruck (OTS) – The budget deficit of more than 150 million euros for the coming year cannot be avoided. Nevertheless, a structural spending brake will be needed quickly afterwards. Everything will no longer work out, otherwise the debts will explode.
Comprehensive childcare, hospital financing, health and care, climate protection and energy transition, inflation compensation, local public transport or affordable housing: the tasks of the black-red state government for the coming years are clearly defined, and the policy expressed in numbers should reflect this. Namely the state budget.
Anyone who puts two and two together will realize that these political challenges will probably exhaust all financial scope. The legal right to childcare alone is likely to cost around 500 million euros when fully developed. At the same time, the country’s 5 billion euro budget is already bursting at the seams, because mandatory expenses from personnel to infrastructure cannot simply be outsourced. They are continually rising and are rising more than ever because of inflation.
There is therefore a financing gap of more than 150 million euros in the 2024 budget and a debt burden of 1.1 billion euros. This was unthinkable years ago, but the corona pandemic and the inflation crisis have placed massive demands on the public sector. From today’s perspective, the political requirement of “whatever the cost” needs to be questioned more than critically. On the other hand, the aid packages – also for the municipalities – were able to stimulate the regional economy again and prevent unemployment.
Although we are once again in an economic dip and the federal and state governments are supposed to take countermeasures, a spending brake is needed. You simply have to save, invest sensibly and sustainably. What is deliberately overlooked when there are strong calls for the state – also to implement (prestige) projects: The abolition of cold progression gives employees more net of the gross, but reduces the tax revenue of the local authorities.
High debts also mean high interest rates. This makes it all the more necessary for the state and municipalities to slow down their budgets in order to reduce debt. Besides, the watering can has had its day, there are no cash cows. Anything that doesn’t pay off shouldn’t be artificially kept alive with subsidies. This applies to swimming pools as well as to small ski areas or cable car systems. The state and communities cannot build everything at the same time, and not everything has to be funded immediately.
Saving means taking a step back. It’s better to keep your money together with a sense of proportion than to make radical cuts in a few years. That would be politics with foresight.
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