Friendly fire in the coalition government. United We Can accuse the PSOE of allying with the PP to knock down its housing amendments in the General State Budget (PGE) and the Socialists deny the mayoress. Both denounce the alleged lie of the opponent, but the only certainty is that the Board of the Budget Commission of the Congress of Deputies, according to the criteria of the lawyers, has vetoed that the public accounts regulate the limitation of the rental price, the prohibition of withdrawals and the imposition of obligations to large homeowners.
The Bureau of the Budget Committee met this Tuesday to veto the amendments that it considers unrelated to the budget debate. The focus resided in the modifications on housing planted by Unidas Podemos, ERC and EH Bildu, because they collected claims that the three parties wanted to see in the bill that came out of the Council of Ministers and that they want to introduce in the housing law, stranded in the parliamentary procedure due to the substantive discrepancies between the PSOE and its partners.
The meeting of this body was still taking place in the Lázaro Dou room of the Lower House when sources from United We Can raised the alarm. According to these sources, the PSOE and the PP have joined forces in the Mesa to overthrow "behind closed doors" their amendments relating to housing. "At a time of growing concern about the life situation in Spain, marked by a context of rising mortgages and rents, PSOE and PP have decided not to allow the debate on this amendment in the Budget Committee," he denounced. . .
From the PSOE, however, they deny that this has been the case and even say that United Podemos itself has positioned itself in favor of rejecting these amendments because they are not superior. Socialist sources point out that the vetoed amendments have been voted as a whole and that Unidas Podemos has run in the same direction as PSOE and PP, something that the Confederal Group denies and sees as absurd.
The sources of the PSOE, and in this there is agreement with Unidas Podemos, admitted that the president of the Budget Committee, Pilar Garrido (Podemos), has made a statement saying that, weights not being directly budgetary, their debate would have been good in the commission, even knowing that they were not going to go ahead due to the positions already expressed by the rest of the parties —the PSOE refuses to deal with this in the PGE when the housing law is being processed in parallel.
The difference between the two versions lies in the vote. The PSOE says that Unidas Podemos, despite expressing its disagreement, has voted in favor of vetoing its own amendments. United We Can deny it. Other sources presented at the meeting of the body in the reason of Unidas Podemos in this regard. According to the latter, there are a total of 51 amendments that have been vetoed following the recommendation of the legal services of the Lower House for being "amendments that regulate matters that, according to constitutional jurisprudence, do not enter into the budgetary contents."
This explains that these 51 amendments, 48 have been unanimously rejected by the Bureau of the Budget Commission, but the three from Unidas Podemos, ERC and Bildu on housing only by PSOE and PP, always following the criteria of the lawyers. , but not for the president of the organ, Pilar Garrido. From the Popular Parliamentary Group, it indicates to ABC that Elvira Rodríguez has intervened in the debate to criticize the "pilgrims, subjects and ideological" arguments of the United Podemos deputy, by abiding by the judgment of the legal services in all the bloc's amendments except in yours. The popular ones, for example, have accepted the veto of thirteen of his amendments.
From the PP they also disdain the criticism of United We Can that the debate has been "behind closed doors" because the decision to convene the Bureau of the Budget Commission without its spokespersons falls exclusively on its president, who is a member of Podemos. In Unidas Podemos, however, they criticize that the argument used to veto their amendments is that a law cannot be amended with another law and they recall that in the General State Budgets of 2021 —debated in 2020— their amendments on evictions were accepted, although the poster, in the debate, rejected.
Unidas Podemos, ERC and Bildu have presented four amendments on housing and three of them have been vetoed this Tuesday: those of rent regulation, structural prohibition of evictions and obligations for large holders. Only the amendment that establishes tax incentives for owners who reduce the price of their rental homes remains alive for debate in committee, considering it strictly budgeted. This Thursday the presentation of the Budget Committee meets to begin debating the amendments that have not been banned.
The PSOE and the PP knock down in Congress the amendments that they present together with ERC and EH Bildu to regulate rental prices and stop evictions. With the bipartisan alliance, our country goes backwards, with the progressive majority, it advances. We need the housing law now.
— Ione Belarra (@ionebelarra) November 8, 2022
The general secretary of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, has echoed the vote on Twitter, pointing directly to the PSOE and the PP for a "bipartisan alliance" that demonstrates, according to her, the need to approve the law now housing in Congress.
