DutchNews.nl - VVD and PvdA plan no more changes in 2013 spending plans

The two parties currently negotiating forming a new government have no more plans to amend the outgoing government's 2013 budget, it emerged during a debate on Tuesday.

VVD leader and prime minister Mark Rutte told MPs no other changes in the financial planning for next year 'are expected'.

The changes agreed earlier this week by the VVD and PvdA include scrapping the tax-break on travel expenses and the extra fees for students who take too long to complete their degree.

The changes to the budget agreement, reached earlier this year, were criticised by opposition MPs. The anti-immigration PVV, which pulled out of the current governing alliance forcing last month's general election, said the VVD had lied to voters and made too many concessions to the PvdA.

The Socialists, by contrast, accused the PvdA of adopting the 'neo-Liberal course followed by the VVD' by agreeing to spending cuts, not extra investment.

The Christian Democrats and Liberal Democrats D66 both said the new alliance is saddling the average person with an increase in taxes.

Meanwhile, sources in The Hague have told Nos television the atmosphere between ministers in the outgoing cabinet is 'not great'.

The VVD-CDA coalition is now in a caretaker role, pending the formation of a new administration.

In particular, CDA ministers feel they are being held back by Rutte, who is now intent on doing business with the PvdA.

Readers' Comments

This is more important than Sheeple think. (Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, insist that heaping austerity upon austerity will not lead to a recovery in Europe, but to impoverishment and the possibility that the continent will enter a cycle that, this time around, will closely resemble the great depression of the 1930s)

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/2792181-please-make-austerity-more-flexible?xtor=RSS-9

By Highlander | 3 October 2012 9:05 AM

Hi,
“I want my vote back”. I could understand if many Dutch voters are disappointed at parties changing policies for power.

By Terence Hale | 3 October 2012 4:27 PM

@Highlander: 'Agree, it makes no sense, unless the idea is to encourage people to save more in the banks & spend less with the 21%..? No, then the guv would complain about that also, and find some other way to legally rob.

I would just love one of the experts they have explain to us the reasoning behind their strategy.

I think we have the same guv, weed-pass debating too much & not able to make sound decisions to benefit the economy, only slow it down further, quite sad :( So far, trusting the EU elite to make Europe stronger is a prolonged failure & we are the rats on the ship in a storm.

By The visitor | 4 October 2012 4:59 AM

@The Visitor
Apart from political change and good impartial political leadership, most of all, we urgently require, immediate 'banking reform', and strict regulation. I does appear that the banks are running our society's these days, they are a law unto themselves, and they are desperately resisting change. Its shocking under the circumstances, they are immoral, and our politicians are their lackeys?

Banks Attack Proposals
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/analysis-of-eu-report-recommending-big-banks-be-split-up-a-859297.html

By Highlander | 4 October 2012 9:55 AM

"No purple coalition".. My foot! These two should get a room already!

By Interested Observer | 5 October 2012 1:10 PM