National
State budgets for 2008 in Spain finally approved in Congress
By h.b. - Dec 20, 2007 - 7:10 PM
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It was a busy Thursday afternoon of voting in Congress with the governing Socialists managing to overturn the veto imposed on next year’s budgets by the Senate. The new budgets for 2008 are thus approved. The Government managed to raise 182 votes with the support of the IU, PNV, BNG, Nueva Canarias, Chunta Aragonesista and the ex PP deputy Joaquín Calomarde. There were 165 votes against from the PP, CiU, ERC, Coalición Canaria, Eusko Alkartasuna and Nafarroa Bai.
The strange thing about the budgets is that there is 220 million which has not been assigned, according to the Ministry for Tax and the Economy, because of errors in the drawing up of the numbers. The veto in the Senate has meant that the document has not been able to be corrected.
Minister Pedro Solbes said the 2008 budgets were ‘a continuance’ of budgetary policy which had been supported by parliament and strengthen by the amendments debated and approved over the past four years. He underlined that the state was leading investment at 7.77 billion €.
The PP spokesman, Vicente Marínez-Pujalte, commented that the Government had shown itself unable to manage the ‘economic bonanza’.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister took advantage of the last session in Congress this year to announce officially that the General Election will be held on March 9th next year. Parliament will be officially dissolved on January 14, and official campaigning will begin on February 22.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wished a Happy Christmas to all, and expressed his thanks to all the media who had, he said, worked hard over what had been ‘an intense legislature’, and who ‘had translated what we do here to the citizens’.
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