Samaras Closes In on Budget Cut Deal

Greece’s uneasy coalition government has nearly reached agreement on all the measures in a $14.6 billion spending cut plan, one of its members said, without revealing what they were.
Emerging from a meeting with Prime Minister and New Democracy Conservative leader Antonis Samaras and PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos on Sept. 27, Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis told reporters: “We reached an agreement on the main axes. There are still some outstanding issues.”
Kouvelis and Venizelos had been resisting some of the harshest measures demanded by international lenders, such as more pay cuts, slashed pensions and the layoff and eventual firing of as many as 35,000 workers, but he did not reveal what the deal was on those issues.
The three political leaders have been wrangling for months over how to make the cuts and whether certain sectors, such as the poor and elderly should be protected, but it appears as if the brunt will fall on the most vulnerable again while tax evaders will largely continue to escape although they owe the country more than $70 billion.

Kouvelis also said that Greece will ask the Troika of the European Union-International Montery Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) that is putting up $325 billion in two bailouts for a four-year extension to impose reforms, not two years as Samaras had wanted.
The Prime Minister has not asked the Troika formally for more time but Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras said that another two years to reduce the deficit from 9.3 to 3 percent and meet fiscal targets would require as much as another $20 billion in aid. Stournaras, who was present at the meeting of the three leaders, described the agreement as a “basis for strong negotiation” with the Troika, who have to approve them before Samaras rams them through the Parliament that his government controls.
Finance ministers of the Eurozone of the 17 countries that use the euro as a currency are meeting on Oct. 8 and could decide whether to approve the release of a $38.8 billion loan installment, the last in a first series of $152 billion in rescue funds.
A second bailout of $172 billion is also in limbo. The agreement came a day after 50,000 Greeks furious over another round of pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions took to the streets in a massive demonstration and 24-hour general strike and as more strikes are set to begin.