It was tempting to write about the democratic ethos of Geert Wilders again this week. On Sunday he tweeted a video of a boy urinating on the meat products in the supermarket, while the filmmaker explained: “We don’t eat pork.“Ten more seats,” tweeted the man who would like to be a prime minister for all Dutch people. The video soon turned out to be fake: a joke by a boy who had made several fake pee videos. The man who would like to be a prime minister for all Dutch people left his tweet up, after all, he does not apologize on principle.
This evokes emotions in me, such as anger and indignation. But those emotions are exactly the problem: I actually wanted to write about the deductible, a subject that has received less attention in the public debate than the emotions that Wilders evokes, but has much more impact on the lives of all Dutch people. Last week, a parliamentary majority of SP, PvdD, GroenLinks-PvdA, Denk, BBB and PVV adopted a motion to abolish the deductible – a striking fact that went almost unnoticed.
The campaign barely mentioned the deductible. If it did happen, it was only as a battering ram from angry citizens: in the SBS debate, Frans Timmermans was attacked by a PVV voter who accused him of not being able to pay her deductible. But then no one said what abolition actually means. The deductible costs 3.6 billion, eliminating it costs more than 2 billion extra due to the increased demand for care. That almost 6 billion has to come from somewhere: either a tax increase, or cuts to something else, or an increase in health insurance premiums. In any case, it is a redistribution of healthcare costs from sick to healthy. Would the VVD, the party of personal responsibility, agree to this?
It is related to a broader question: how do VVD and NSC, who adhere to conservative budgeting, want to come to an agreement with PVV and BBB, who mainly like to promise nice things to their supporters? The PVV wants every healthcare user to be pampered, a wish that cannot be honored in a rapidly aging country without increasing taxes and attracting additional immigrants. The PVV denies the latter: it wants to solve the staff shortage “by hiring new staff”. The party does not explain where these personnel should come from. In addition to excellent care, the PVV also promises a lowering of the state pension age to 65 and a “major reduction in taxes” by abolishing VAT on food. According to ex-CPB member Wim Suyker, who calculated various programs, all this means that the government deficit under the PVV will grow by 14 billion.
The fact that the PVV has never had to figure out how to finalize a budget was evident during the parliamentary debate on the Autumn Memorandum on Tuesday. When asked about his coverage of the abolition of the deductible, PVV MP Tony van Dijck mentioned the abolition of all development aid. A haphazard answer, because the countless PVV wishes cannot all be paid for through culture and development aid. “We only have one thing in mind and that is the citizens’ wallets,” Van Dijck said. He did not yet know whether that wallet would be faced with increased tax burdens or cutbacks. “We have no anchors or visions for the future.”
The PVV has often been called ‘the socio-economic left’, but that is nonsense. In the socio-economic field, there is no coherence to be found in the plans. More than left or right, the party is above all unserious. And now she has to deal with two coalition partners who know exactly what they want, namely cuts. The story of VVD MP Eelco Heinen was clear on Tuesday: “We spend way too much money.” According to him, at least 10 to 15 billion euros will have to be cut. NSC MP Nicolien van Vroonhoven said that her party is in line with the VVD in terms of finances: “We all have to keep our hands on our purse strings.”
I know who will have the upper hand on matters such as the deductible: the parties that have seriously thought about how you pay for everything. If the PVV wants to govern, it will have to abandon not only its anti-rule of law plans, but also its so-called ‘left-wing’ socio-economic policy. Much attention has been paid to the first, but not to the second. It didn’t evoke enough emotions, I think. Numbers are boring. Until they are felt by real people, but then it’s too late to debate them.