From the 2026 Budget Audit
Why does the Speaker hand out your taxes to charities of his choice?
A 100 million Ft statutory budget lets one political officeholder donate public money to whichever causes he personally favours — with no vote from the people who fund it.
Roughly 25 Ft per household per year — 100 million Ft total, allocated at one office-holder's discretion.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the organisations the Speaker selects for support in any given year. The unseen: every wage-earner whose tax funds a transfer they had no say in, substituting four million households' dispersed preferences with one official's personal ranking of causes.
Objection
"But surely the Speaker funds worthwhile things — hospitals, community groups, disaster relief."
Answer
If the cause is genuinely worthwhile, citizens can and do fund it voluntarily, at the scale their own priorities dictate. State-coerced giving is not generosity — it places 100 million Ft of allocation in one official's hands and removes the choice from everyone who earned the money.
Share if you think charitable giving should reflect your choice, not a politician's.
The analyst's verdict
Public-Purpose Offerings and Donations of the Speaker of the National Assembly
Rationale
This is a statutory budget that places public money at the personal charitable discretion of the holder of a political office. The Speaker chooses recipients; taxpayers fund the choice; the recipients are whichever causes the officeholder favours. The size of the line — 100.0 millió Ft — is not the point. A budget that exists so that a political officeholder can make donations in the state's name, to recipients of the officeholder's selection, is a subjective allocation of resources by a political officeholder. There is no calculation by which the state can determine the "correct" set of charitable recipients, because charitable giving is precisely the expression of a donor's own subjective ranking of causes; the only honest version of this activity is the officeholder giving from their own income, or private donors giving from theirs. Citizens who wish to support a cause can and do — directly, with their own money, at the scale their own preferences dictate. A state-funded version simply substitutes one person's preference ranking, exercised with other people's money, for the dispersed preference rankings of the people whose money it is.
Transition mechanism
Delete the line in the 2026 cycle. No reliance interest is defeated: there is no contract counterparty, no employee, no accrued entitlement. Any commitments already announced can be honoured by the Speaker personally or by private donors.
Affected groups
Whichever organisations would have received discretionary donations. They retain every avenue of voluntary fundraising open to any other organisation.
Szabad Társadalom Intézet
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