“Smoke”: Maud Bregeon and Bruno Retailleau castigate the “amateurism” of Marine Le Pen’s budget

Marine Le Pen “takes the French for amateurs” by “throwing away” 140 billion in savings, government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said on Thursday, a criticism shared by LR candidate Bruno Retailleau.

“This objective is based on spending cuts and tax increases which are in no way explained. It's easy to put forward figures, it's smoke and mirrors. This is once again taking the French for amateurs, budgetary questions require a little seriousness and not figures thrown into the air here or there,” reacted Maud Bregeon on franceinfo.

“Minus 15 billion euros on migration, without it explaining to us exactly what, 8 billion euros on health spending by reducing hospital costs, again, we don't really know where it comes from,” she cited as an example. Presented Tuesday by the RN candidate, the document provides for 66 billion efforts from 2027 and 140 billion net savings by 2032.

“A debt cannot be cut into slices”

On LCI, LR candidate Bruno Retailleau denounced an “untenable” budget which would lead “to a crisis”. “All observers (...) who looked at this project seriously, concluded that it was not serious, that it was a form of amateurism,” underlined Bruno Retailleau, who will present his own budgetary program “at the beginning of next week.” In his eyes, the RN program notably underestimates the impact of reducing the retirement age to 62 years, or even 60, a measure for which he estimated the cost at 25 billion and not 2 billion as planned by the far-right party.

Bruno Retailleau also criticized a “lack of credibility” on the budgetary questions of Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, whom he presents as the former prime ministers “co-responsible” for the results of the two five-year terms for “having participated in the enormous increase in the debt and the disastrous results” of Emmanuel Macron.

“A balance sheet is not a salami, it cannot be cut into slices. A debt cannot be divided into slices,” he said, assuring that the additional “1,400 billion euros of debt” accumulated by France since 2017 lead to “the prospect of a Greek-style crisis.” “It’s all a fiasco,” lamented the Republican boss.