(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
While the SV and the Labor Party are aiming for an early liquidation of the cash subsidy, if Ap, SV and SV come into government position after the election this autumn, Center Party leader Åslaug Haga now announces the fight for the aid scheme. To Aftenposten, Haga says that "we consider it a very important issue for us," despite the fact that Sp was very skeptical when the scheme was introduced. "It is not easy – and should not be easy – to remove an existing scheme from which many plan their lives," says the SP leader, without her wanting to issue an ultimatum in the case.
It seems a little strange to us that the leader of the Center Party in this way marks the standpoint of a scheme that Sp was so skeptical to implement. It may seem as if Haga needs to mark the distance to the SV and the Ap, while at the same time she may be able to draw more center and right voters to her party. At the same time, we believe Åslaug Haga has some points that the SV and the Ap leaders should bring with them as well.
Figures Dagsavisen has obtained from the National Insurance Administration show that constantly fewer parents choose to receive cash benefits, despite the fact that the number of eligible children is fixed. The explanation is, according to researcher Marit Rønsen at Statistics Norway, that the parents would rather have a daycare place than cash support – but that not everyone gets a place. Then the Labor Party and the Socialist People's Party should take it upon themselves that the key to phasing out the cash support is to fulfill the promises of full daycare coverage at a reasonable price – as the daycare settlement assumes – and that prices should also be further reduced. If Rønsen's explanation is correct, we must be able to expect a further decrease in the number of cash benefit recipients in line with increased daycare coverage and lower prices.
We therefore believe that a solidarity government that has been discontinued by the three parties should not put the liquidation of cash support at the top of the work list when they take up the government offices. The scheme should possibly be discontinued after Norwegian toddler parents are secured access to daycare. Then there is probably no talk of many parents receiving cash support, and much of the motivation for it disappears. Spending millions of dollars only on administering the cash support will also be irresponsible.
Therefore, we are also puzzled by the Center Party's "compromise" on cash support, and would like to warn against a solidarity government making the SP's compromise its own. Sp is thus in favor of retaining the scheme, at the same time as they want to make it a condition that one of the parents is at home with the child – ie that no day mother or similar schemes are used.
The only argument we can see for the cash support today is that some parents do not actually receive kindergarten space, and that society has a responsibility not to place them in a hopeless situation. Therefore, parents who have to use daycare should receive support until full daycare coverage is in place. In the long run, however, it is irresponsible to pay parents to be out of working life not just one year, but three, after a birth.
Therefore, the Labor Party, the Socialist People's Party and the Socialist People's Party should agree on the following compromise: The cash support is maintained until full kindergarten coverage is reached, and the places have a price parents can live with. Thereafter, the aim is to phase out the scheme gradually. It can probably – unfortunately – take far more time than both the Labor Party and the Socialist People's Party have assumed in their proposals for the state budget.
