The fallout continues after Norway’s finance minister, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, formally presented the government’s state budget proposal for next year. He and Labour Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre have been under fire ever since, for allegedly overselling their proposals and blatantly deceiving voters.
“Vedum’s budget is dishonest,” read a headline in Norway’s largest newspaper Aftenposten, while newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) branded the budget as “Vedum’s tax bluff.” Leaders of political parties on both the right and left have also used the word “bluff” and believe voters have been misled, getting the impression, for example, that they’d finally get some meaningful tax relief next year, only to discover that it amounts to the equivalent of just NOK 200 (less than USD 20).
The Conservative’s former Prime Minister Erna Solberg of the Conservatives, leader of the opposition, declared in Parliament that she has long thought Vedum’s numbers and claims need fact-checking. “After all the budget claims this fall (made through carefully orchestrated budget “leaks”), we also need to begin to fact-check the prime minister,” Solberg said. She questioned whether the prime minister would “begin to speak honestly about budget priorities.” He called the question “sensational,” and fired back that “the answer was of course, ‘yes.’” He and Vedum have been on the defensive all week.
The differences between “leaked” state budget proposals and their actual numbers span a wide range of issues from household economy, climate measures and nature preservation, to asylum issues and tax relief for both businesses and individuals. Improvements that Vedum and Støre had seemed to promise in recent weeks (including assurances that Norwegians would have more spending money next year and that nature would be better preserved) did not materialize in the actual budget numbers, further damaging their credibility in a government already struggling in public opinion polls.
Just hours before the budget was released on Monday morning, for example, Vedum was offering coffee to reporters and claiming live on national radio and TV that “for a person who has NOK 700,000 in income, the sum of what we’re doing amounts to around NOK 4,800 (USD 450) in lower taxes.” That led most listeners to believe that income taxes next year would be cut by that amount for most average wage-earners, only to later learn that the NOK 4,800 is the amount of the government’s tax relief over its entire four-year term.
Neither Vedum, who’s promised for months that “ordinary Norwegians” would be better off next year, nor his ministry made any effort to clarify the situation. And there’s been a string of such alleged deceptions emerging all week:
*** Money promised for nature preservation has instead been cut. Even rural landowners who expect advantages from Vedum’s Center Party found that funds promised to compensate them for not chopping down trees were cut by more than half: Voluntary forest preservation stands to lose NOK 444.2 million next year, even at a time when Norway is only halfway toward the goal of preserving just 10 percent of its forests.
*** Students told that their student loans could be excused if they move to outlying districts found that only NOK 25,000 of it would be. Confusion reigned as both Vedum and Støre dodged questions on the matter.
*** More money promised for the police is likely to be eaten up by rising costs and pension obligations, as is that for health care. Even support for Ukraine was found to be not as high as expected, while several organizations within foreign aid and refugee assistance were outraged to find out that the Norwegian government only wants to accept 200 UN-certified refugees next year, because of all those taken in from Ukraine.
That and the lack of other expected funding have also infuriated the Socialist Left Party (SV), on which Støre and Vedum rely to get a majority in Parliament. “It’s all been a huge bluff from the prime minister,” fumed Lars Haltbrekken, a Member of Parliament for SV and former head of Norway’s chapter of Friends of the Earth (Naturvernforbund). MP Alfred Bjørlo of the non-socialist Liberal Party called it “trickery.” They were especially angry because Støre had recently wandered around a lake in Oslo, with reporters and camera crews in tow, while announced an extra NOK 100 million for nature preservation. The problem is that other funding for a nature preservation program, Natursats, was cut, along with nearly NOK 450 million for forest preservation.
“When the government says it will give NOK 100 million to nature preservation and at the same time cuts nearly NOK 450 million to forest preservation, the budget promises aren’t worth the paper they’re written on,” said Sofie Marhaug of the far-left Reds Party.
Støre himself was tight-lipped over all the budget discrepancies, initially trying to send questions to the ministry in charge of climate and the environment. His office finally issued a statement to state broadcaster NRK claiming that the prime minister “stands by what he said” earlier, otherwise referring to his answer given in Parliament when challenged over the budget, during which he claimed that local governments “are the most important players here” and that the state would help them “do the job.”
At issue is the government’s credibility, and how it will fare during budget negotiations this autumn. State budget proposals are always challenged in Parliament, but it’s unusual for the government to be accused of bluffing, trickery and dishonesty. “The government has ‘dressed up’ the budget with selective use of numbers,” claimed Gury Melby of the Liberal Party. Sylvi Listhaug of the conservative Progress Party claimed in Parliament that “if the government was a company, it would be convicted of intentionally deceptive marketing.”
Asked whether the government’s strategy was “to hide a lack of management by deceiving the public,” Støre replied “The government’s strategy is to deliver a responsible budget that contributes to giving people better household economy and contribute to maintaining good results for Norwegian companies and industy.” Budget negotiations are likely to be difficult.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund