Mr President, honourable Members, Mr. Prime Minister, we are discussing a State Budget that is a piece of a disastrous policy based on propaganda and serving a minority that lives off the hard life of the majority of the people.

A budget at the behest of Brussels, of tax breaks, of diverting resources from the National Health Service to groups in the business of disease, of transfers to new Public-Private Partnerships and of support that is never lacking for the golden non-habitual residents.

A budget for a policy that chooses to guarantee millions of euros to economic groups and multinationals, who live on dependence of subsidies from public resources, at the expense of the wages of workers in the private sector and Public Administration, at the expense of the pensions of those who have worked a lifetime, at the expense of public investment, housing, transport, culture, science, nurseries, care homes and forests.

A policy that chooses to dismantle the National Health Service, close emergency rooms and services, degrade public schools, dip into Social Security funds, push for more privatisations and hand over TAP.

This is the Labour Package Budget, a declaration of war on workers, especially the youth and women.

Even more precariousness, even more deregulation of working hours, dismissals without just cause, this is the blow dealt by big business, voiced here by the PSD, CDS, Chega and Iniciativa Liberal, but which is receiving and will continue to receive the response it deserves.

Mr. Prime Minister, house prices continue to rise, rents are rising, evictions are rising, the number of babies being born in ambulances is rising, the number of closed emergency rooms and students without teachers is rising, the cost of living is rising, the prices of food, electricity and gas, tuition fees are rising, the profits of large companies are rising, and in the face of all these increases, what your government and all those who support your policy really want is to lower taxes on profits.

Mr. Prime Minister, according to your doctrine, all we need to do is lower taxes on large profits or, if we want to take a specific and recent example, lower taxes on Galp's €973 million in profits in the first nine months of this year, and the Country is guaranteed to bounce back and move forward.

But in truth, what you have not yet managed to explain, and I would ask you to do so today, is how you justify the fact that, with IRC-Corporate Income Tax constantly falling, the much-vaunted economic miracle has never materialised?

Taxes on profits are falling, wealth is increasingly concentrated, and the promised decent wages, that unstoppable economic growth, and fight against poverty and injustice, all despite the systematic reduction in IRC, which was once 35% and is now 19%, stubbornly refuse to materialise.

As reality has always shown, the cut in taxes on profits is worth nothing in terms of wages and means nothing in the difficult lives of thousands of small entrepreneurs who are struggling to keep their businesses afloat.

And here, everyone knows that this is so. The PSD and CDS know it, the PS knows it, having helped to reduce IRC last year, and Chega and Iniciativa Liberal know it, having been responsible this year for ensuring a further cut in taxes on profits, and it is telling that Chega still wants to do away with the state surtax, exempting 74 large companies from paying €600 million in taxes on profits.

€600 million less for what needs to be done, €600 million more for the coffers of those 74 companies, this is the sole objective of those who table this proposal.

The State Budget is bad because of what it contains and because it is an instrument of a disastrous policy for those who live and work here.

Those who allow, either openly or covertly, this Budget to go ahead may find all sorts of justifications and even the most creative adjectives, but they cannot escape being accomplices and key players in this path and, sooner or later, they will have to answer to the youth, the population and workers.

The Country needs another path, a path of sovereignty, a path that puts those who work, those who have worked all their lives, and young people at the centre of its action.

The Country needs another policy and another Budget.

This is what the PCP is committed to.