The rapporteur for the general budget in the Senate, Jean-François Husson, called on Tuesday for a “collective effort” in the face of the economic situation, urging both the Macron and the right, her political family, to “take a step towards each other” in the event of a tax increase, which divides the parties.
“We have to look at the unprecedented and tense situation of our finances. We cannot play with fire. If we all go beyond the red lines, a Mikado is formed which immediately collapses. Unfortunately, this is what is happening. “It is happening,” lamented the senator from Meurthe-et-Moselle, a member of the Les Républicains group in the upper house, to AFP.
After seven years of tax cuts, Michel Barnier surprised some of his Macronist and LR interlocutors by evoking a tax increase, still in its infancy but planned in the name of a suffocating budgetary situation.
Accept an extra effort
But according to Jean-François Husson, whose role as rapporteur-general is strategic in the Senate in the construction of the 2025 budget, “the political configuration forces us to go beyond expectations and preconceived perimeters.”
“My convictions have not changed: I think we pay too much tax. But when we are in the red, we have to put things right. We have to look at everything,” including the issue of taxes, admits the parliamentarian, who believes “on a personal level” that it will be “perhaps necessary to accept some additional, new and temporary efforts” in the face of “the berezina in public accounts.”
“The red rag must be in your pocket, because if you agree to be in government, you get into marching order and move forward. We need commandos who go into battle and tell the French that we have a collective effort in fair proportion to the capacities of each one,” continues Jean-François Husson, who has distanced himself from LR in recent months following the accession of Eric Ciotti to the National Rally.
Michel Barnier on Tuesday described the country’s budget situation as “very serious” and “called for all elements to assess its exact reality,” he said in a statement to AFP, saying that the period demanded “responsibility” and deserved “better than spoken phrases.”
In the same vein, Jean-François Husson also called on the Senate Finance Committee to have a “spirit of responsibility and openness.” “And to do so, we must not engage in political or economic marketing, we must not pit the French against each other,” he urged.
Source: BFM TV
