He denounces that the middle and working classes have to pay more for a transfer to the private sector: “It is not freedom, it is slavery”
MADRID, 31 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has warned of the deterioration of public services which, in his opinion, is causing a transfer to the private sector. Along these lines, he has affirmed that there is a right-wing plan to weaken the Welfare State in the territories where it governs.
In his initial intervention during the debate in the Senate where the debate on the measures approved by the Government to deal with the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the rise in inflation is taking place.
Thus, Sánchez has affirmed that it is the families and the middle classes and workers who have to face this deterioration of public services such as health, education or dependency services, as he has listed. “This is making us poorer, less free,” she has indicated.
He has also argued that by not having to pay for private services “that they previously had in the public”, young people have more difficulties to emancipate themselves, to take risks and set up a business. “It generates anxiety, frustration and pessimism, it is not freedom, it is slavery,” she said.
Thus, he has indicated that this “degradation” of public services is not accidental and that there is a plan to weaken the Welfare State and convert “rights into merchandise.” On the contrary, he has rejected the existence of a hidden plan to overthrow democracy and turn Spain into a “collectivist Bolivarian dictatorship” as, in his opinion, the right maintains.
Sánchez has affirmed that this plan to undermine the quality of public services has as its objective that the middle and working classes have to switch to education, health, transport and private pensions. As he has indicated, it is the model that he would like to apply to the right “and its far-right partners” throughout Spain.
The head of the Executive has specified that this plan is not formulated directly because it would be “too crude” but that it is “masked” with the promise of lowering taxes. Thus, he has criticized that the discourse of the right offers tax savings but “what it does not say” that saving, which he has estimated at 44 euros per month for an income of about 25,000 euros per year, entails an expense of about 2,500 euros for private services.
However, Sánchez has rejected that his is an “anti-business” discourse and has assured that he is not against the existence of hospitals, schools or private residences, but that there is an education “for the poor” and another for others or that the difference between “being sick or well” is not the money a family has in their checking account.
Along these lines, he has accused the opposition of stating that Spain spends too much on public services when spending per person on health, education, social housing or dependency care is less than the average for European countries.
On the contrary, he has assured that in recent years the number of Spaniards who have contracted private insurance has increased, from 8.5 to 11 million, spending on private classes has tripled, and places in private residences have grown by 47,000 new beds while those of public ownership have only grown to 13,000.
