“I know that this is not an argument from the authorities, but a reflection of the contempt that new generations are doomed to, precisely in this budget, which we are discussing here today,” he criticized.

Rita Matias dismissed the idea that there is currently a “structural democratization of higher education”, emphasizing that “it is not enough to expand higher education jobs if young people cannot learn”.

“Higher education has never been as elitist as it is today,” he defended, citing statistics that “more than 40% of young people who do not have access to higher education do not do so due to lack of financial conditions”, so that “ 10% of students dropping out of the first year of graduation” also for the same reasons.

The Chega MP also addressed the current rent price and student housing shortage to criticize the “small €200 support” the government is giving university students this year, stating that “that amount will reach a reduced universe” and “it’s already sinning too late “.

“How can a young man trust PS? (…) The Prime Minister came to this debate to say that the success of the PS youth policy can be seen in the number of graduates, masters and doctors, and it is useless if they are then condemned to starvation, ”he criticized.

In a political speech by the Liberal Initiative, MP Carlos Guimarães Pinto stressed that his party in this state budget will propose a single IRS rate for the first five levels.

According to the liberal deputy, “this is not an offer of alms, this is an offer that allows workers who are in trouble to keep most of what belongs to them, which they then earned with their labor.”

“In this budget, we will have to make a decision: do we want dependent workers to wait for 125 euros of alms when António Costa decides to distribute them, or do we want emancipated workers, self-sufficient, better paid, not thanks to alms from the IU, but only getting what is theirs, what are they entitled to?” he asked.

Carlos Guimarães Pinto also announced that his party would also “propose the introduction of a housing subsidy with the same tax treatment as the food subsidy”.

It will be “a voluntary subsidy that any employer can provide to their employees,” the IL MP said.

In a request for clarification to Carlos Guimarães Pinto, PS MP Pedro Anastasio stated that the budget of the Liberal Initiative would be “every man’s budget for himself” and “be saved who can”.

“You have the opportunity here (…) to demonstrate the goals of your political project, because even if they are ashamed, they are in fact the destruction of the welfare state,” he said.

In his reply, Carlos Guimarães Pinto said that the MPs from the Liberal Initiative are “very proud” to “defend the ideology” they stand for in the Assembly of the Republic.

“We are very proud to sit on the shoulders of giants like Locke, Adam Smith or Bastiat, and not like others who sit on the shoulders of butchers like Che Guevara, Mussolini, Lenin or Salazar. Or others who sit on the shoulders of those less worthy of corruption,” he stressed.

“We sit on the shoulders of giants! Liberalism has been around for 300 years, spreading prosperity, and it will continue to exist when your ideologies, when your parties are already in the dustbin of history,” he added, drawing a laugh from Prime Minister António Costa.

Lusa