Foreign News: Storm Signals

After two months in office, Premier Georges Bidault’s government was in serious trouble last week, barely managed to win a confidence vote in the Assembly.

Bidault’s Finance Minister Maurice Petsche had prepared a budget of 2 trillion 275 billion francs ($6,500,000,000), had balanced it, at least on paper, by calling for 200 billion francs in new taxes. The Radical Socialists (conservatives) drafted what they considered a more realistic budget which would cut out all new taxes, slash government expenditures and leave a deficit of 23 billion francs. The Socialists objected to that: they insisted on the new taxes, threatened strikes if as a result of cuts in government expenses any civil servants were fired. Bidault finally put his own budget draft to a vote of confidence.

This was a bold parliamentary thrust. The Fourth Republic’s constitution provides automatic dissolution of the Assembly and new elections if two governments fall on votes of confidence within a period of 18 months. Thus if Bidault’s cabinet went down, the succeeding regime would be able to threaten the deputies with dissolution every time they failed to come to heel in a confidence vote.

Bidault squeaked through, by 303 votes to 297. But no one felt like taking down the storm signals. Every one of the 50 articles in the government’s budget must still be voted on separately by the fractious Assembly, which then must approve it as a whole.