Constitution of money

The White House claims that the new "socially oriented" budget takes into account the interests of both rich and poor. (Photo: Vasily Dyachkov )

It seems that even our government dawned that you need to live in the means. For the first time since Soviet times, the draft budget-2001, submitted by the Cabinet of Ministers for approval of the Duma, is deficient. The planned income of the federal budget in 2001 will be equal to expenses and amount to 1 trillion. 193 billion 48 million rubles is one and a half times more than this year. The authors of the main financial document proceeded from the following prerequisites: the volume of GDP will be 7.75 trillion. rubles, inflation - 12%, the average ruble exchange rate is 30 rubles for an American dollar.

Paper idyll
The optimism of public financiers, of course, has some reason. In the Russian economy, there is a rise, which, however, became possible thanks to the almost record growth of world oil prices. By the way, the government was safe: today an oil barrel costs $ 32. At the beginning of September, the OPEC conference (organization of oil exporters) was scheduled, which should actually solve the only issue: to increase the volume of raw production and in this way the prices per barrel to $ 25. The revenue of the Russian budget is compiled due to the fact that Barrel will cost 18-19 dollars. With almost one hundred percent confidence, it can be argued that oil prices will not fall to such a low level, which means that the government will have a good “nurse” for all sorts of unforeseen expenses.

The White House believes that the introduction of the Tax Code will increase tax collection, and therefore the corresponding figure in the budget is increased by almost 3%compared to last year. It should be noted that in the budget of this year, this indicator has already been increased by 7.7%, and it seems that this tax authority will fulfill the plan.

It is assumed that the costs of paying public debt in 2001 will amount to 11.4 billion dollars, but this is provided that the Paris club will take its restructuring. However, according to the deputy chairman of Vnesheconombank Sergey Storchak, the chances of comprehensive restructuring are very low, which means that it will be necessary to find an additional 3-3.5 billion dollars.

For the first time, an article appeared in the main financial document of the country, which provides for the costs of restoring Chechnya - the republic will receive 4.5 billion rubles. The deputy chairman of the Duma Budget Committee and at the same time deputy chairman of the State Duma Commission on Chechnya, Ashot Egiazaryan, considers the very fact of the appearance of such a line in the budget with great progress, although he is sure that this article will cause serious disputes in parliament.

The sore question is the redistribution of tax revenues between the federal center and the regions. In the draft budget, the percentage of these values ​​is 56.3 to 43.7. True, government officials argue that it is real - taking into account all kinds of federal payments for children, disabled people, veterans - the share of the regions will be more, about 53.2%. However, the chairman of the Duma budget committee, Alexander Zhukov, believes that "the tendency to redistribute funds in favor of the federal budget is obvious, and it is not correct in the federal state."

And yet, in the general opinion, the main battles will unfold around the costs of defense and safety.

The muscles of war
Cicero said that "money is the muscles of the war." From year to year during the budgetary suffering, our security forces tried to increase the "muscle mass". And it seems that this time they achieved their own. The hysteria about the "impoverishment of the army", to which the generals are trying to write off the tragedy with the Kursk submarine, forced the government to increase defense costs.

The Ministry of Finance, which turned the budget, was not going to radically increase military expenses. Back in July, at the College of the Ministry of Defense, Alexei Kudrin told the generals that they will receive no more money next year than in the current one. However, the death of the atomic submarine mixed all the cards, and as a result, the military budget was urgently increased from 146 to 206 billion rubles. It would seem that the generals should be satisfied. But they only began to make claims louder: they say, all these years were deceived - there is money in the treasury, it turns out, there is! The fact that a certain reserve appeared in the government for the first time in ten years, they, apparently, simply do not want to take into account. The Ministry of Defense went on the attack. Firstly, the generals say, the military budget itself did not increase by 60 billion at all. Kudrin, in their opinion, cheatil, including articles in defense expenses that were not previously included there, such as expenses for international activities and for the maintenance of railway troops (they are not part of the armed forces). The military recalled the Yeltsin decree prescribing to spend at least 3.5% of GDP on defense (206 billion proposed now by the government amounts to 2.6% of GDP).

The irritation of army financiers is also caused by the fact that the authorities for the first time decided to establish control over the expenditure of funds allocated by the military. This year, all money to pay for the procurement of weapons will be carried out through federal treasury, and not through authorized banks. A year later, the same should happen with funds for the maintenance of the army. To preserve the management of financial flows, the generals have no choice but to declare that the new budget is insufficient. All past years was an unspoken agreement between the government and the military. The government perfectly understood that the defense budget could not finance the entirely, which, after each discussion in the Duma, seriously increased. And not wanting to take responsibility, it allowed the military to independently distribute budget funds.

The military does not hide that they are counting on the support of the State Duma. Firstly, they are sure that parliamentarians will not miss the opportunity to use the Kursk tragedy for self-promotion. Secondly, Arbat Square believes that the Duma in debt to the army. Indeed, recently, at the proposal of the government, the parliament has significantly cut social payments to military personnel. The norm was canceled that establishes a directly proportional dependence between the salary of the military and the size of the minimum wage. With the introduction of the Tax Code, the military deprived of another important benefit - tax exemption. True, they promised at the end of the year an increase in salaries by 20%, but this does not compensate for the above losses.

For these laws (and their team of liberal economists, whom the president supported), were voted by those parliamentarians who like to act as "army defenders". Now the president, as it seems to them, fundamentally changed his position, and they are in a hurry not to lag behind the steam locomotive. The OVR faction demanded to increase military costs to 3.5% of GDP. Following her, the Communists and "Unity" spoke with the same requirement.

Thus, despite the unprecedented increase in military expenses, the probability that the deputies will not approve the budget in the first reading is very large: they say, the government did not pay due attention to the defense of the country. The clearly conjunctural nature of the claims is evidenced by the fact that deputies are not at all interested in how the funds allocated for defense will be spent. The Duma is more than calm to the fact that the government is going to control the financial activities of the military itself, without resorting to the help of parliament (which is why it stubbornly refuses to expand the list of open articles of the military budget). The parliamentarians did not excite the fact that the document recently signed by Vladimir Putin, which determines the development of the Russian Armed Forces for the next ten years, is purely secret. Not only the public, but most of the parliamentarians will not be able to get acquainted with it.

We are waiting for changes
Times of the open confrontation of the executive and legislative authorities have gone into history. The current Duma is not just “contracting”, it is openly “Kremlin is listed”. However, Alexander Zhukov believes that this time, when discussing the budget, "Professional-Regional Debats" will be quite violent, but "Purely political discussions" will decline. The head of the budget committee, in particular, believes that, in addition to the already named articles, a serious conflict may cause the Cabinet of Ministers to abolish numerous extra-budgetary industry funds and deprivation of closed administrative-territorial entities (BUD) additional tax benefits.

There are no guarantees that national interests will prevail among deputies over the interests of narrow -industrial or regional. True, now, after the entry into force of the new Budget Code, parliamentarians have received the right to discuss with the government regarding the content of certain budget articles, without waiting for the first reading.

Most of the Duma interlocutors of the observer of "results" agree that the new budget "will be difficult, but not more difficult and not easier than usual." Government officials demonstrate the determination to fight almost every figure of "honest and realistic" (by definition of Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin). The first reading is September 22. We are waiting.

With the participation of Alexander Golts