All on Tremonti. The prime minister and almost all the ministers think that the electoral defeat is the fault of the austerity policy imposed by the head of the economy who brutally cut spending and did not even want to talk about tax cuts. And many cite the Report read yesterday by the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Mario Draghi, in support of their accusations. In addition to the differences on the management of the economy, suspicions about Tremonti's political attitude add up. Is austerity really necessary – many are asking – or is it an excuse put forward by the head of the Treasury to put Berlusconi in a bad light and take his place?
But perhaps few have carefully read the Governor's Remarks who certainly calls for a cut in taxes on labor and businesses, but makes it very clear that this must take place at the same time as a severe containment of current spending which must be cut by as much as 5 points over the next three years percentages. And few have considered that the rebuke to Tremonti on the long-term unsustainability of linear cuts means that every ministry will have to take up the scalpel and go looking for waste and unproductive spending to prune it mercilessly, and at the same time reorganize all its functions in to offer services to citizens in the most efficient way. Perhaps Tremonti adopted the policy of linear cuts because he had to act under the impulse of the emergency and perhaps because he had mistrust in the real ability of his colleagues to choose where and how to cut. Now there are three years left and this work of reorganizing the entire public expenditure can and must be done.
The money for the tax reduction can be found - the governor continues - through an intensification of the fight against tax evasion. But if this is not enough, other resources can be recovered both with further spending cuts and with small increases in indirect taxes. Above all, the Governor insisted on the need for reforms; from Justice to Education to the liberalization of public and private monopolies, especially in the services sector, which only partially depend on the Minister of the Economy but which are indispensable for bringing Italy out of the stagnation it has been in for at least a decade.
Without a real overall project for the country, asking Tremonti to widen the purse strings means only risking increasing distrust of the markets and risking raising the interest rates necessary to obtain the subscription of public bonds. In short, the political debate should be focused on the best way to cut expenses and not on the demagogic promise to distribute a little money to everyone that doesn't exist.
Ernesto Auci
