NEWS RELEASE

February 25, 1998 For Immediate Delivery

For the Liberals, Spending Your Tax Dollars is Job One

"Taxpayers balanced the budget but the Liberals reward themselves first."

Ottawa -- Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville found little to cheer about in Paul Martin’s budget. "The Liberals balanced the budgets on the backs of taxpayers by increasing taxes. Who do they reward? Not taxpayers. They reward themselves with big-government programs that make them look good," said Breitkreuz. "Tax revenue will increase by $48 billion by the year 2000 - taxpayers will only get $7 billion of it in the form of tax cuts."

Missing from Martin’s budget were Reform’s proposals for (1) a reduction in the GST, (2) increasing to $7,900 the basic personal exemption including spouses, (3) extending the Child Care Expense to all parents even those who care for their kids at home, (4) a reduction in capital gains tax, (5) a reduction of both CPP and EI premiums, (6) indexing tax rates for inflation to prevent bracket-creep, and (7) a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

"The Liberals also put big-government spending programs ahead of debt reduction," reported Breitkreuz. "The Finance Minister’s budget reports a net public debt of $583.2 billion for the 1996/97 fiscal year and in the year 2000, it’s still exactly the same. Interest on the debt is still eating up more than $40 billion a year - money that could be better spent on lowering taxes, paying down the debt and improvements to provincial health and education programs."

"So if Canadians didn’t get tax relief and the government isn’t paying down the debt, what did we get? More than $10 billion for 25 new big government spending programs. But is this really the best way to achieve the government’s objectives? The Millennium Scholarship Fund will only help about 6% of students and not until the year 2000. Rather than just simply increasing transfer payments to the provinces (or better yet giving provinces more tax room as Reform proposed), the Liberals decided to intrude into an area of exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces," reported Breitkreuz.

The government’s budget also failed on the job creation front. The huge increase in CPP premiums and keeping a $6 billion surplus in the Employment Insurance fund is killing jobs especially for young people," stated Breitkreuz. "What good is an education if there are no jobs. The government continues to waste billions on programs that most Canadians oppose such as funding for special interest groups, business subsidies, multiculturalism, enforced bilingualism, and aboriginal programs that don’t get to the grassroots Indian people."

"The budget also failed the people of Saskatchewan. There was not a word about agriculture. Not a word about using some of the $5 billion in fuel taxes to help fix up our highways. Not a word about improving our grain transportation system. Spending is job one for the Liberals but not where it could really make a difference," concluded Breitkreuz.

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For more information, please contact:

Garry Breitkreuz, M.P.