The State Duma has begun work on a plan for the implementation of the Presidential Address 2024

The State Duma working group on the implementation of the President’s message on Wednesday completed the collection of proposals from deputies regarding the legislative support for the 2024 Presidential Address, and will soon begin analyzing them. According to representatives of the opposition, they have proposed many of the ideas voiced in Vladimir Putin’s speech for a long time and now hope for their approval by the Duma majority.

As Alexander Zhukov (United Russia), the first vice-speaker of the Duma, head of the working group on implementing the provisions of the president’s annual messages to the Federal Assembly, told reporters, by March 6 the working group had received more than 400 proposals from Duma factions, committees and commissions. “They touch on all the points of the message. We have already begun to analyze and systematize them. In the very near future, this work will be completed, and the group will meet to consider the draft plan,” added Mr. Zhukov.

United Russia promises to talk in more detail about the faction’s proposals after they are systematized. And the oppositionists note that many of the theses of the message announced on February 29 echo the already prepared parliamentary initiatives.

For example, the leader of the party and faction “A Just Russia – For Truth” (SRZP) Sergei Mironov told Kommersant that the Socialist-Revolutionaries have already submitted to the Duma or prepared to submit initiatives on 15 topics corresponding to the proposals from the president’s address. “Unfortunately, at one time they were not supported by the Duma majority and the government, but now we are counting on their adoption, even if not our authorship. It is much more important for us that Russian citizens receive the necessary laws that will improve their lives,” noted Mr. Mironov. He recalled that the Duma is considering SRWP bills on social supplements up to the subsistence level for the working population, on additional measures of social support for disabled children of war, on the exemption of large families from paying property taxes, etc. In addition, SRWP is still on March 31, 2023 year proposed to the government to establish a personnel program for participants in a special military operation, which the president has now announced. And on October 6, 2022, party members introduced a draft on priority admission to the civil service of participants in the special operation.

Also among the proposals of the Social Revolutionaries are an increase in spending on education, health care and culture, the introduction of a unified tariff schedule for strategic professions, new measures to support families with children, modernization of the Unified State Examination, payment of a “mother’s salary” to a non-working parent raising children, etc.

In the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the first deputy leader of the faction, Nikolai Kolomeytsev, is preparing proposals for the implementation of the president’s message. He was in his region on Wednesday and was unavailable for comment. But the leader of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, also told reporters on the day of the president’s speech that a number of theses of the message corresponded to long-standing proposals of the communists.

The LDPR has initiatives “on every point of the message,” especially since it “largely reflected the proposals of the party’s election program,” its press service told Kommersant. Among them, for example, is a project to change deductions for a number of taxes in favor of the regions (the faction will introduce it next week). In addition, the LDPR has already submitted to the Duma a project to introduce additional payments to the insurance pension for pensioners with at least 30 years of work experience, so that the amount of payments reaches twice the cost of living, and is preparing amendments to provide war veterans and disabled people, as well as members of their families with the right for psychological assistance and medical and psychological rehabilitation.

Finally, the press service of “New People” told Kommersant that “in all areas that are important to people, the faction works constantly, both before the president’s message and after.” “Specifically based on the results of the message, our deputies worked on proposals in their relevant committees,” the party members added.

The Duma committees also prepared their proposals. Thus, the chairman of the Committee on Science and Higher Education, Sergei Kabyshev (SRZP), explained to Kommersant that his committee focused on “achieving independence and self-sufficiency in the fields of science and education.” And the Committee on Labor and Social Policy, as its head Yaroslav Nilov (LDPR) told Kommersant, made “those proposals that definitely should and will be accepted”: on helping large families, providing long-term care for needy citizens, improving the payment system labor of public sector employees and increasing the minimum wage (recall that the president said that by 2030 the minimum wage should increase to 35 thousand rubles). The deputy also noted that the plan for implementing the message “may be adjusted after the president’s instructions are implemented, and the government will make additional proposals.”

Ksenia Veretennikova