Budget 2027: Juvin wants a 10% spending cut, and Article 49.3 to force it through

According to franceinfo, Philippe Juvin, Les Républicains MP for Hauts-de-Seine and rapporteur général of the finance bill (the lead parliamentary rapporteur on the budget), predicts that "the budget will be refused by Parliament". He argues for resorting to Article 49.3, the constitutional device that lets the government pass a bill without a vote, and for cutting spending by roughly 10% in the 2027 budget. The details of the targeted items have not been specified in the material available to us: we therefore do not yet know what would be cut, nor which revenues would be affected, if any.

What follows is our reading, which commits only us. A lead rapporteur who announces in advance the defeat of his own text before the elected representatives, then calls for the tool that would get around them, offers a fine illustration of budgetary democracy: consultation is welcome, provided the answer is the right one. Article 49.3 is not an accident of procedure here; it is an admission that the chosen line cannot find a majority.

Why? Because "spending" is a convenient word, one that hides more than it shows. A dose of state spending is a nurse's salary, a school's budget, a jobseeker's allowance, but also aid to businesses. Ten per cent less is never ten per cent less for everyone. As long as the list is not public, the question to ask is the one about the budget itself: who pays, and who is protected?

The Marxist tradition describes the modern state as a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie. That is the classic formula, which later authors have qualified: the state enjoys a relative autonomy and remains a site of struggle. But its room for manoeuvre is set by one imperative, that capital continue to accumulate. Austerity is a textbook illustration. Services and transfers that sustain wage earners' incomes are cut, while profits are treated as natural data, never as a variable to adjust.

There is also a less visible effect. Eroded public services and reduced benefits make wage earners more dependent on employment of any kind. For Marx, the industrial reserve army, that pool of unemployed or precarious workers, weighs on the wages of those who have jobs. Austerity that weakens demand and public employment mechanically enlarges that pool. Whether intended or not, the disciplinary effect is the same. We attribute no intention to M. Juvin; we describe a logic.

Finally, note that the register is one of accounting fatalism. One must "reduce", as one reduces a fever. Nobody asks how much surplus was produced, or to whom it belongs. Yet raising revenue from profits or wealth is, too, a budgetary choice.

The sequence is known in advance, if the rapporteur is to be believed: rejection, then 49.3, then a possible motion of no confidence. What we are waiting for is the line-by-line table of the 10%: that is where class struggle stops being a metaphor. (our translation)