Exceptional back-to-school aid deeply revised by Parliament
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During the examination of the amending budget, deputies and senators finally agreed on the framework of this measure. Payment is expected in September.
After several stages, Parliament has finally issued the final version of the future exceptional back-to-school aid. Given birth in pain, by dint of compromise, the latter, which was presented by the government initially as a “food check“, has changed during its examination by the elected officials.
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The latest version of the text, defined during a joint joint committee (CMP) and which must be adopted this Thursday afternoon for the last time by the two chambers, provides that “exceptional help“back to school be paid both to beneficiaries of social minima, such as the RSA or the disabled adult allowance (AAH) and to people receiving the activity bonus. A compromise sparing the goat and the cabbage, by rewarding precarious workers, as the right-wing majority in the Senate wanted, while helping fragile homes, as the government and the Assembly wanted. “We could not accept that the recipients of social minima are deprived of aid […]. Our majority has never pitted the French against each other“, welcomed the rapporteur of the CMP to the Assembly, Jean-René Cazeneuve.
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With a double downside: first, the amount of aid, which had risen to 150 euros per beneficiary in the upper house – for a more measured overall cost, the people targeted being fewer -, goes back to 100 euros for all . Then the overall bill increases, from 750 million euros in the Senate version to 1.1 billion euros. Or 100 million euros more than in the initial costing of the executive.
A disagreement between Senate and Assembly
Reaching this agreement was not easy, the text having been profoundly reshaped by LR senators. Originally, “exceptional helpBack to school presented in July by the government brought 100 euros to some 7.7 million households – or 15 million people, according to the Senate – receiving social minima such as RSA, AAH or scholarship students. This aid would have been increased by 50 euros per dependent child. Overall cost: around one billion euros, according to the government.
Voted in the Assembly, this aid was criticized by the senators, who defended a profoundly different vision, centered on the value of work. In his report on behalf of the Finance Committee, Jean-François Husson thus formulated a mixed opinion on this mechanism, which “follows the inflation allowance“. However, this lastwas characterized by a lack of targeting […]massive threshold effects, extremely high cost […] and an implementation largely based on companies, which is not the vocation, with risks of duplication and fraud“. Pointing to the difficulties encountered during the deployment of the allowance, Senator LR stressed that the exceptional back-to-school assistance would be “the fourth one-off allowance paid to low-income households since spring 2020“. An expensive balance sheet, tosocial efficiencychallenged.
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Rather than aid deemed too broad and ineffective, the rapporteur therefore suggested “focus the budgetary effort on supporting the purchasing power of workers, who are currently excluded from the proposed system“. Amendment 191 thus proposed toreplace exceptional back-to-school assistance […] by a one-off aid of 150 euros paid to the beneficiaries of the activity bonus», paid over three months. Tabled by the right, sub-amendment 543 bis suggested paying this one-off aid also to “recipients of disabled adult allowance(AAH).
An electric debate
The idea of the modification is “to ensure that French people who have a job, who are poor workers […] find, at the start of the new school year, exceptional support” of 150 euros, justified Jean-François Husson, in session. “We must give a signal, encourage more and betterthe workers, he added, specifying that this change also made it possible to maintain the difference between income from work and income from assistance, and to save at the same time 250 million euros.
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His statements, as well as the proposal from the right, had aroused strong opposition in the Senate. “Ugly […] should benefit eight million low-income households, who are on social minima […]. The amendment would remove [son] benefit four million poor households“, replied the Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal. In addition, the beneficiaries of the AAH would receive exceptional aid in the copy of the government and other measures have already been designed by the majority to promote work, added the member of the government.
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On the left, the groups accused the elected LRs of wanting to take the bread out of the mouths of the most precarious and of pitting the fragile against each other. The centrist Élisabeth Doineau expressed concern about a provision that would discriminate against single mothers receiving the RSA, “not able to work“, when the ecologist Thomas Dossus judged that the right took advantage”of the night to hit the poorest“. “You are preparing for an explosive comeback“, he warned, before his socialist colleague Rémi Féraud criticized a “very ideological amendment“.
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