On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin called on parliamentarians to increase spending on combating terrorism. On Wednesday, the Federation Council responded and proposed to allocate an additional 3 billion rubles ($89 million at the budget rate of 33.7 rubles per dollar) for anti-terrorism. The probability of the Duma approving the Senate amendment to the 2003 budget is 100%.

The reasons for Putin's "request" are clear to everyone. The state must respond to a terrorist attack by strengthening security measures, and this requires money. "If you like, this is our rebuff to terrorists," Senator Svetlana Orlova said during the discussion of the amendment. "We also believe that terrorists must be rebuffed. But the hasty allocation of $86 million is more likely to harm us than the terrorists.

Firstly, the allocated amount is small - only 0.1% of the total budget expenditures. Not comparable, say, with the American response to September 11 - $40 billion, or 2% of the state's expenditures.

Secondly, the expenditure on law enforcement and defense in 2003 is already planned to increase compared to 2002 - by 72 billion and 61 billion rubles, respectively. This is an increase not only in absolute figures - at the same time, the share of security expenditures in total budget expenditures is also increasing (from 27.5% to 29.9%). If this money is not enough to ensure Russia's security and repel militants, then how will adding another 3 billion rubles improve the situation? Such gestures do not paint the authorities in a good light.

Thirdly, the senators proposed to allocate money not by increasing budget expenditures, but by redistributing them. However, they did not want to take responsibility for this redistribution, i.e., for reducing expenditures on education, science, or paying off the foreign debt. "The government will decide," Senator Yevgeny Bushmin told Vedomosti. The reduction of other items will occur due to officials "saving" money. "The Ministry of Finance convinced us that the amount of savings in the budget will be exactly 3 billion rubles," Bushmin explains. Should deputies spend time on the budget at all, if the government is implementing it very freely and openly talking about it? Instead of making their populist decision, the senators should have responded to Putin's request: "Security expenditures have already been increased, Vladimir Vladimirovich. What next?"

FROM THE EDITOR: Fast and inexpensive