re: newly elected Belgian Government
The resulting pact includes more spending on healthcare - at the Socialists' insistence - and continuing tax cuts, as demanded by the Liberals.
Mr Verhofstadt acknowledged that Belgium's budget would not balance for the fourth year in a row, blaming the European economic slowdown.
These two sentences actually appear sequentially in the article, believe it or not. A certain lack of economic perception on the part of the Prime Minister suggests itself. This lack is practically a job requirement for leftists, but I was under the impression (maybe mistaken) that Verhofstadt leaned slightly more toward the right.