CDA wants basis jobs for benefit recipients and higher taxes on wealth

Like many other parties, the CDA is making social security an important campaign issue, as list leader Henri Bontenbal explained at a talk Friday. The CDA wants people to pay more taxes on their wealth, while income will be taxed less. The party is campaigning for basic jobs to help benefit recipients get full employment to prevent people from being "sidelined."

Bontenbal also wants benefit recipients who live together to stop having their benefits cut. If it was up to the family party, child benefits and the child-related budget would also be significantly increased.

"Our social security agenda is based on work as the most important instrument," Bontenbal said in his Hannie van Leeuwen lecture in Amersfoort. He also wants a solid "family package" to "give more breathing room and room to maneuver, especially to our families." Bontenbal is concerned about "silent poverty," especially among children, and "social poverty when people don't have enough money to simply participate in social life." Municipalities should be able to help these people, for example, by taking over all debts. That way, families don't have countless creditors.

But many people who are not living in poverty are also struggling, the CDA chairman said. Households with a normal income sometimes have just enough to make ends meet, but rising prices mean they have little financial leeway “to save or create a buffer to absorb adversity. It's not poverty, it's insecurity. It's about livelihood."

Not only with his plans but also explicitly, Bontenbal opposes the VVD, with which his party has been closely allied in recent years. "I find the image that the CDA is an offshoot of the VVD really frightening," he says. In recent years, the CDA has placed too much emphasis on defending compromises instead of defending its own ideals, the Christian Democrat says.

Although Bontenbal already outlined some plans in his presentation in Amersfoort, the CDA will officially present its election program on Monday. This weekend, the draft list of candidates for the parliamentary elections will be announced.