Collapsed Cabinet facing powerful, but divided parliament in budget debate today
Today and tomorrow, the twice-collapsed Schoof I Cabinet has to convince an unprecedentedly strong parliament to support the plans in the national budget presented on Tuesday. That will almost certainly be a difficult job. The political parties seem more divided than ever, and with the parliamentary election next month, many will focus on pushing their campaigns instead of on working together.
The remaining coalition parties, VVD and BBB, hold only 32 of the 150 seats in the Tweede Kamer, so getting a majority for any of their plans will likely take a lot of convincing and appeals of unity from caretaker Prime Minister Dick Schoof.
Many of the opposition party leaders criticized the government’s budget, saying that the caretaker Cabinet is avoiding difficult choices and only focusing on short-term solutions, among other things. GL-PvdA leader Frans Timmermans already said he’d prefer to reach an agreement with other parties to overhaul next year’s budget after the election on October 29. His party wants to accelerate housing construction. The CDA wants tax changes focused on the future, not just immediate relief. D66 and SP want to scrap education cuts. The PVV wants more measures to stop people from seeking asylum in the Netherlands.
Schoof feels responsible for the situation and is determined to work with parliament to keep the country running, he told reporters on Tuesday afternoon. “Of course, I take the question, ‘Do you blame yourself?’ to heart. Of course,” he said, according to NU.nl. “I am, after all, the leader of this Cabinet.”
To get majority support for any of its plans, the caretaker Cabinet will have to convince at least 44 opposition MPs to vote in favor. The easiest path to that would be to try and convince the biggest parties in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament - PVV (37 seats), GroenLinks-PvdA (25), and NSC (20).
But the VVD’s relationship with left-wing GroenLinks-PvdA is hostile, and the PVV and NSC are the two parties that pulled out of this Cabinet. Many parties have also said they won’t work with the PVV in the next Cabinet, so there is little incentive for far-right leader Geert Wilders to attempt a cooperative attitude.
In his Budget Day speech on Tuesday, King Willem-Alexander urged the gathered politicians to have “the willingness to see beyond our differences and the maturity to reach out to each other.” Today’s debate will show whether the members of parliament will give heed to that appeal.
