The love for calculating party programs has cooled: ‘We do it reluctantly, certainly in recent years’

The calculation of the election programs by the Central Planning Bureau has become as much of a fixture in the campaign period as TV debates and the poll circus. Criticism of the methods used by the Planning Bureau has been a tradition for just as long. But rarely have the Planning Bureau’s models and calculations come under so much fire as during this campaign.

The new calculation will be presented by the CPB on Wednesday. CPB staff have worked for weeks to map out all plans of participating parties and their consequences. What does a program do to the government debt? Will this reduce unemployment? This provides hard figures and ammunition for the parties, who like to show off their best scores.

However, this year’s calculation does not provide a comprehensive picture of the political landscape. PVV, SP PvdD, BBB, Denk, FVD and NSC submitted nothing to the CPB. This means that the calculation loses much of its value as a yardstick for comparing all programs, even though many of the dropouts say that they will use their own calculators on their program.

Menu without prices

The fact that the choice of whether or not to allow the program to be charged causes friction was clearly visible in the RTL debate on Sunday. VVD party leader Dilan Yesilgöz dedicated her one-on-one debate with NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt to one question: why did Omtzigt not have his plans calculated? Now his party program read like “a menu without prices,” Yesilgöz said. Frans Timmermans, party leader for GroenLinks-PvdA, also called the substantiation of Omtzigt’s plans “vague”.

Omtzigt defended itself with a critical plea about the ‘model reality’ of the independent Planning Bureau, which was founded after the Second World War to provide the government with objective and scientifically substantiated economic advice. Omtzigt has often expressed this criticism, and not alone. It is the same reason that SP MP Mahir Alkaya gives as a reason for not having the program charged this year. The party did so from 2006 to 2021. Alkaya: “Reluctantly, certainly in recent years.”

The criticism is twofold. First of all, the CPB makes predictions based on models about the way in which the economy and society will deal with policy. However, some beneficial effects of policy plans are difficult to quantify, while the calculation does show the costs.

SPAlkaya And suddenly all parties want to increase the minimum wage. That cost us five elections of bad publicity to get them to that point

For other calculations, the CPB does make precise predictions, but economists and politicians draw very different conclusions about the consequences. A well-known example: the minimum wage. For a long time, the CPB assumed, based on economic literature, that an increase in wages, even if limited, would have a negative impact on employment.

The scientific consensus has shifted in recent years, an insight that has now also been incorporated into the CPB models. “And suddenly all parties want to increase the minimum wage,” says Alkaya. The SP has wanted that for much longer. “That’s the world upside down. That cost us bad publicity for five elections to get them to that point.”

Alkaya immediately points out the second point of criticism. The CPB is no longer just a measuring stick, but has also become a cheat sheet for political parties to choose policies. Because the CPB models are favorable for measures that push more people into the labor market, a large number of parties have, for example, included all kinds of tax credits in the program that encourage people to work.

Then, with the CPB figures in hand, you can call yourself a ‘jobs champion’, even though no job has been created as a result of such a reduction and the tax system becomes a bit more complex. The fact that the Central Planning Bureau warns year after year against drawing too bold conclusions from the calculation has not deterred parties.

Rosy

This year’s calculation faces another notable bone of contention. The yardstick that the CPB uses to compare the programs is itself the subject of discussion. It recently emerged that the Ministry of Finance arrived at very different figures for the most basic data in the CPB formula – the government’s expected income and expenditure in the coming years.

The ministry expects tax revenues in the future to be significantly higher than the CPB predicts. Moreover, in its predictions, the Planning Bureau, unlike the Ministry of Finance, expects that a lot of money will remain on the shelf, because the incoming cabinet will simply not spend it – the so-called underspending.

Only the CPB figures are used for the calculation, while the Finance figures are much rosier due to these differences. The difference is several billions. This is an easy weapon for parties that will soon see a minus in the budget in the CPB calculation of their program. They can point to the ministry’s calculations and say: look, it’s not that bad.

It recently emerged that the Ministry of Finance arrived at completely different figures with a CPB formula

Despite all the criticism, many economists remain in favor of the calculation ritual. Their main argument is that the CPB’s accountants force the parties to be open about their choices. The vagueness of the party program is then no longer an option. During the calculations, there is plenty of communication about this between the financial specialists and the CPB calculators.

That openness provides clarity. For example, in 2012, a year in which the programs were full of cuts, it turned out that the SP still wanted to increase the retirement age, and that the PVV (which was also participating at the time) did not dare to calculate an exit from the euro. It is quite possible that another bomb is hidden in Wednesday’s calculation.

“The importance of models is immensely overestimated,” says retired CPB economist Wim Suyker. “A large part of the calculation is figuring out what the parties actually want. Okay, you want to abolish VAT on fruit and vegetables. That costs so many billions. That’s the most work.”

Suyker has now turned the refusal of many parties to have their programs calculated into a mission. Using his CPB experience and his knowledge of models, he has been calculating how the programs will work out for weeks. He publishes the results online. He noticed, he says, that those programs were often “very vague.” “Certainly the BBB, and also Omtzigt.”

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