Sánchez opposes his "social tax reform" to those who weaken the welfare state

“What welfare state do we want?”.

The question was rhetorical and has been asked several times by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to defend his recent tax reform in his speech recorded on video to close this Saturday the IV edition of the La Toja Vínculo Atlántico Forum, by continuing to test positive for the covid.

It was, above all, a plea in defense of public and universal services for all Spaniards.

With a political message in the background.

The Government of the PSOE, according to Sánchez's presentation full of data and examples, intends to use the evident increase in income that the State is now collecting to better and more finance a "social justice" response to the crisis caused by the war in Ukraine and the increase in prices due to inflation.

“There is no greater tool to combat inequality and defend social justice than the welfare state.

But social justice requires a starting condition: fiscal justice.

Let each contribute according to their ability.

It is the value inherent in the European social model.

And it is a principle that permeates our constitutional pact”, President Sánchez emphasized in his presentation from La Moncloa for the closing of a forum full of politicians and big businessmen who are very nostalgic for bipartisanship and who have shown great fear and concern for three days before the immediate future.

The head of government did not hide his concern about the consequences of the war caused by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, although he once again predicted that he will be defeated and questioned the validity of the referendums he has promoted in recent days in the areas that Russia has given later by annexed, consultations that the Spanish president described as "pantomime".

Sánchez also took the opportunity to recall that a year ago, when he closed the third edition of that forum, he already anticipated some measures and demands on the energy market that he later promoted at a European level with his Portuguese colleague, the Social Democrat António Costa.

Costa's appointment came just one day after the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who spent the three days of the Forum on the island of A Toxa (Pontevedra),

Sánchez did not avoid that controversy but quite the opposite.

His government maintains that if it is well and reasonably explained what the taxes and the higher public revenues generated by the tax reform announced this week are used for, the Spanish will understand the clear and ideological differences between their model and Feijóo's liberal one.

And that is what the president was entertained doing this Saturday.

The general secretary of the PSOE first recalled how the PP Executive acted to get out of the financial crisis of 2008, with cuts in health and social services that took 10 years to recover, and opted to now face this situation in a radically different way.

And he used the term "social justice" as a "value that links the most advanced countries and leaders in the human development index with fair taxation to provide quality public services" and as "the one that sustains the social contract that unites to a country".

To Sánchez's question about “what welfare state do we want?”, the president answered himself: “It is time to choose and the options are clear: do we strengthen or weaken the welfare state?

Shall we strengthen public services or weaken ourselves?

Do we collectively protect ourselves against the risks of future crises or do we disarm ourselves when responding to those risks?

He denies there is a spending problem

The socialist leader also denies, as the leaders of the PP and other right-wing parties criticize, that now in Spain, with the PSOE Executive and United We Can, there is a spending problem.

And he provided his data: “Before the pandemic, Spain was the sixth country in the European Union with the least tax revenue and the eleventh with the least public spending.

In fact, our income and public expenditure have been five points below the EU average in recent years”.

The president admitted that there are also some European nations that raise and spend less, but he classified them as the "republics that belonged to the former Soviet bloc."

Sánchez thus identified the countries with higher levels of human development, social cohesion and less inequality with their tax revenues.

And he stressed: "Who do we want to look like in the future?", To immediately answer: "What we cannot pretend is to have a welfare state like the Nordic countries with levels of tax revenue typical of less advanced countries."

And he influenced: Do we want to be Europeans with a European welfare state?

If we answer affirmatively to this question, we must be consistent: provide income to that welfare state”.

This is how the head of the Government entered into the leathery debate on how to pay for that welfare state.

And there he armed himself with the Constitution and the historical experience observed in Europe to conclude that in a western and advanced nation like the Spanish, that State "must be paid for by all citizens and in proportion" to their income, something that despite the controversies These days it seems obvious to Sánchez, even with the recommendations of international organizations, the OECD, the IMF and the European Central Bank: "Taxes must be progressive: those who have more must contribute more to the common fund."

Pedro Sánchez took up the lessons that he thinks should have been learned in this regard during the recent pandemic, when the deficiencies of the toilets were verified due to "the disarmament of public health due to cuts", but he regrets that some political leaders have forgotten them so quickly.

“There is no greater show of commitment to those who care for our health, safety and services, than to guarantee adequate financing of public services through fair taxation,” he stressed, and entertained himself by explaining several cases of what the costs entail. of that public health and for all:

“Do we naturally accept that a person can fall into poverty because they cannot afford the expense of a hip operation?

Are we willing to tolerate a woman having to mortgage her home to pay the bill for cancer treatment?

In Spain, a person gets a mortgage to buy a house or a car.

Do we accept as logical that she has to do it to send a daughter to college?

No to liberal solutions

The socialist leader denied the liberal solutions and Feijóo's PP on the fact that money is better in the pockets of citizens and that he disqualified as "the doctrine of every man for himself".

And he replied with examples: "Someone who has to undergo a heart transplant would pay 90,400 euros in our country, which is paid entirely by the State, compared to almost one and a half million in the United States."

Other: “The average cost of hospitalization amounts to more than 5,000 euros.

The average cost of surgical procedures is more than 7,500 euros.

The cost of hospital admission in an ICU bed for covid exceeded 19,000 euros.

The total cost of hospitalization in the network of hospitals of the National Health System exceeds 16,000 million euros;

a figure greater than the total budget of 13 autonomous communities.

For each child enrolled in school, the State spent 6,230 euros.

And for each child studying at the university, 9,589 euros.

Sánchez concluded: “We are not talking about abstract expenses.

We are talking about services that illustrate an uncomfortable truth for the spokesmen of fiscal lack of solidarity: the vast majority of people receive more services than they pay in taxes”.

And he asked the private businessmen present for collaboration and help.

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