When the cuckoo approaches the month of May, there are those who, according to the coins kept in their pocket, measure luck all year round. With the song of the cuckoo comes the campaign of income and we do the measure of it: they will return us more or less than last year, it will pay us... Unfortunately, the cuckoo and the tax settlement rule are as simple as they are simplistic.

In December, without the cuckoo song, the budgets for the new year are approved, and the Basque Government has already presented the draft budgets for 2018. When it comes to assessing the year ahead, those who hide behind these accounts come closer to reality in a more faithful way. I know, the cuckoo song is more romantic, and it's much more difficult and incomprehensible to value the big numbers that have a lot of zero. In addition, the figures cannot be compared in an absolute way: the amount of budgetary expenditure is also related to the country’s level of wealth and taxes collected.

For example, while there has been a growth in the revenue from 2017, it should be noted that with this year’s revenue we have set ourselves at the level we had in 2007. So let's not get too excited! We have taken ten years to recover the level of revenue we had in 2007, and meanwhile, of course, budgets have been reduced and debt has increased.

Furthermore, when it comes to assessing the 2018 draft budget, there are two issues to be discarded, as they completely blur the nature of these. In fact, the budget is reduced by 15% if we disregard the progress made in financing the payment of the debt and works the size of the APR.

From there, there are two other great brakes that limit the budget. The first comes from August 2011: while we were asleep on summer holidays, Zapatero modified Article 135 of the Constitution thanks to the support of the People’s Party. With this reform, all the institutions must give the highest priority to the payment of public debt. In other words, to local governments, reform has been a major obstacle to a genuine budgetary policy. It has been an important step in the institutionalization of neoliberal norms and, at the same time, we have a rule that, without the application of Article 155, completely reduces the autonomy of communities.

The second galga, which comes from July 2017 and comes from Spain, has not been imposed on the Basque Government. Indeed, the support of the PNV has made it possible, on the one hand, to set the deficit ceiling that the budgets of all administrations can have: the deficit of the autonomous communities will not exceed 0.4% of GDP in 2018. It is gradually agreed that the deficit for 2020 will not be possible. Alongside the deficit ban, the surplus also limits the so-called “spending rule”. When the revenue is not going well, the expenditure has to be reduced to meet the deficit ceiling. On the contrary, even if the revenue goes well and there is a surplus, the expenditure will not be able to grow above GDP. This means that public spending will grow below the level of income growth. Thus, year after year, the size of the public sector will be reduced. In short, it is the legal limit for implementing Keynes’s anti-cyclical policies and taking progressive steps in the public sector. A higher degree in the process of institutionalization of neoliberal norms.

We have not yet come to value what will be spent on education, on health or on social policies, but at this point I think that, with all those budgetary limits, 2018 will not be better. A new year comes with the ku-ku and stone-loaded pockets.