THE HAGUE, 23/09/00 - During the traditional General Political Debate following on from Princes Day, the Cabinet did not find itself with problems for a moment. The changes made to the 2001 budget by the Lower House were no more than scribbles in the margin.

The main alterations were extra expenditure for education (150 million), healthcare (130 million), culture (40 million) and families with children (340 million). The Cabinet also had to go along with extra spending on car drivers. The leftwing Green (GroenLinks) party and the small Christian parties combined in the ChristenUnie were the only ones to vote against reducing the costs incurred by car drivers.

Families with children under 16, and an income less than 120,104 guilders, will receive an extra tax credit of 340 guilders per child. And the "combi-credit", which is intended to make the combination of a paid job and caring for children more attractive, will be increased by 75 guilders per child.

These credits will mean that the purchasing power of families on minimum incomes will end up about 1 percent higher than it was in the Cabinet plans. However, this will be financed by a slight increase in taxes in other areas.

A majority of MPs also supported the idea of an investigation into the possibility of a structural increase in the culture budget. The original wish of Labour (PvdA) for making this equivalent to 1 percent of the entire budget did not receive sufficient support. However, a GroenLinks motion for examining the terms of employment in the art sector was passed by counting heads.

Prime Minister Wim Kok accused the Christian democrats (CDA) and GroenLinks of implying with their criticism that the Cabinet was doing nothing to solve the problems in education and healthcare. Kok said that, with more 14 billion in extra expenditure this year, the Cabinet had invested considerably more in the public sector than the CDA and GroenLinks mentioned in their electoral manifestos in 1998. GroenLinks parliamentary leader Paul Rosenmoller replied that Kok was comparing apples with oranges, as the opposition parties also based their programs in 1998 on a far less extravagant economic growth rate than the present one.