Law and Justice (PiS) leader Jarosław Kaczyński said in Katowice on Saturday that an economic “offensive” is needed, one that would not cut social spending but would pair a more effective tax policy with the mobilization of Polish capital. Among other things, PiS wants a lower health insurance contribution for entrepreneurs.
At PiS’s economic convention in Katowice on Saturday, party representatives also announced a higher second tax threshold. They promised lower electricity prices by withdrawing from the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS).
Criticizing the current government, among other things for its debt, Kaczyński said in his speech that an economic “offensive” is needed, along with a return to the party’s policies of 2005-2007 and 2015-2023, with some modifications dictated by the current situation. The offensive would rely not on cutting social spending but on collecting money more effectively, “bringing under control the robbing of the budget and the robbing of the state in general,” and mobilizing Polish capital.
A return to balance, Kaczyński argued, is not possible without a change in the political situation, PiS regaining power and building a “rational government” that includes “not those who talk a lot but have so far done nothing, but those who have shown that they can get something done.”
– Winning is the first thing, the most important. The second is to create a government that can work well, one that won’t play around, as has happened more than once in Polish history over the past several decades, with endless negotiations and endless late-night meetings about what can be done and what can’t, who to put in, which posts to fill and which not to. If it looks like that, you simply can’t govern well – the PiS leader argued.
He noted that even now it is necessary to talk about specific people who will govern and sit on the boards of state-owned companies. – And that has nothing to do, ladies and gentlemen, with any politicization. It is only about not creating a mechanism in which, if someone is in a party, he surely knows nothing and only wants to steal – Kaczyński added. He assured the audience that there would be no handouts in which the only criterion for promotion is membership in, or ties to, a given party.
PiS’s candidate for prime minister, Przemysław Czarnek, built his speech around three words: normality, calm, stability. He expressed his conviction that this is what PiS governments were like. He stressed the importance of a social market economy, in which the free market is organized rather than left to itself, and of a social policy that is neither socialism nor handouts.
– We want a return to a lower health insurance contribution for those entrepreneurs who run their own businesses and earn up to PLN 120,000 a year (…) We propose leaving up to PLN 24,000 in taxpayers’ pockets, in total for a family, because we want to raise the second tax threshold from PLN 120,000 to PLN 180,000 – Czarnek declared.
The prime ministerial candidate also proposed cutting electricity and heating prices for all Poles “by several dozen percent, immediately withdrawing from the ETS.” PiS also pledges, among other things, tax exemptions for working retirees and a tax card, which is meant to restore a simple way of filing taxes for those who run a basic business. According to Czarnek, this will allow entrepreneurs to leave the gray economy.
Czarnek also criticized those currently in power, accusing them, among other things, of using their actions involving the Constitutional Tribunal to “cover up” the country’s poor economic situation.
Former Prime Minister Beata Szydło, in her speech, referred to 2015, when she took office as head of government and, over the objections of some politicians and experts, the 500+ child benefit program was introduced. She said it became an important growth stimulus for the Polish economy and significantly reduced poverty.
– We invested in people, and those people spent that money where they lived, where they had their homes. Thanks to that, the local entrepreneur could keep his business going, municipalities could develop, small towns and villages could develop. People didn’t have to flee from there – Szydło said. She argued that people are increasingly beginning to worry about high energy bills and fuel prices.
Szydło said the current government must be removed from power and public finances must then be returned to stability. – The rule of law must return to Poland. State institutions must again start working for the people, not against the people – she said. (PAP)
