The votes in the budget-finance committees regarding the PSD amendment regarding the Solidarity Package were expressed as each one considered appropriate, but I believe that this package should not be the object of negotiation in a political sense, declared on Wednesday the Minister of Labor, Family, Youth and Social Solidarity, Petre Florin Manole.
"The votes were expressed as each one considered appropriate. That AUR expressed itself in one way or another, they must explain and argue. It is not my business. I said from the beginning, other colleagues also said it, that we do not consider that this package should be the subject of negotiation in the political sense, as we have become accustomed to in this Parliament, because it is about some common sense amendments, about increases where there is a real need, about some prudent increases in terms of budgetary expenditure and in balance with what we must do, namely to reduce expenditure. But not from children, not from pensioners with the lowest pensions. And if our amendment and if our solutions were perfectible, were not sufficient, were not good, were not the most inspired, it would have been common sense if the other parties were constructive and if they had proven that they wanted to be constructive, to come up with other proposals. And we might have been in a position to accept: yes, sir, you have a better, more functional idea; we can go with it," said Manole after the vote on the amendment.
The amendment proposed by the PSD received 23 votes in favor, 19 against and one abstention, while eight AUR parliamentarians said they would not vote.
"We refer to the Regulation of the Joint Committees, which expressly stipulates that, for adoption, you need a number of votes that is at least half plus one of the number of votes of those present. Referring strictly to this article 24, the amendment did not pass. It can be raised in the Plenary", announced the chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, the liberal Bogdan Hutuca.
In this context, Manole stated that it was appropriate for the Commission President to note that there are parliamentarians in the room who are not voting and that they count towards the quorum.
"He counted the votes, without taking into account the parliamentarians in the room who were not voting. The amendment doesn't even matter, what matters is that it is a procedural conflict from one minute to the next, and all this is happening exclusively because the National Liberal Party and the USR want to do anything, including abusing the procedure and inventing the procedure just so that this amendment doesn't pass, just so that they don't give an extra leu for pensioners. It's about empathy. It seems to me that they are completely devoid of empathy," the Minister of Labor argued, noting that, in his opinion, "23 is greater than 19."
He added that the Social Democratic Party was consistent, it was constructive and no one came up with an alternative solution.
"No one came lifting a finger in favor of 2.8 million pensioners with pensions under 3,000 lei and 300,000 children from single-parent families or families with children with disabilities. And I want to say one more thing, because all these days there has been disrespectful and dehumanizing talk about a subject, about the fact that these amendments would have an electoral flavor. I think it's obvious, unfortunately, in Romania, children with disabilities are also born into families of politicians, voters, liberal sympathizers, PSD members, AUR and so on. And, obviously, also into families of people who have no appetite for politics. This clearly demonstrates that these kinds of arguments were just pretexts to oppose this idea and that's why I find it illegitimate that they only used pretexts to block. Once again, maybe we didn't "I've made the best draft amendment, but what's the other one? There is no other one, because there is no interest and there is no interest, because they just want to block it. That's the real problem and that's what the procedural nitpicks are clinging to," Manole explained.
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