After Christmas, the Austrian Government's budget conference for the coming year began once more.
In fact, by this point, the budget battles between the various departments had already ended. This was merely the final round of confirmation.
If the matter of finalizing the budget were truly brought to the conference for discussion, these last few days would probably not even be enough to review the project materials everyone had prepared.
Prime Minister Felix handed Franz a report and said, "Your Majesty, this is the annual budget plan for 1850. The main expenditures include six major categories: military spending, government administration, education funding, land redemption payments, infrastructure construction, and cultural unification.
"Of these, military spending has fallen by 27% compared with 1849, while education spending has increased by 31%, cultural promotion spending by 32%, government administrative spending by 9%, and infrastructure construction spending by 44.5%."
Overall, aside from military spending, all other expenditures had increased substantially. Land redemption payments were the exception; there had simply been no such item before.
While expenditures had increased, government fiscal revenue had increased as well. Otherwise, this budget could never have passed.
Franz accepted the budget report and merely glanced over the summary table.
Military expenditure: 61.5684 million florins, including 10.6523 million for the navy and 50.9161 million for the army.
The war had ended, and the military had already been downsized in 1849. It was only natural for military expenditure to fall sharply in 1850.
However, only army spending had declined. Naval spending had increased by another 1.5 million florins over the previous year. It seemed the Colonial Faction had grown stronger within the government.
Education funding: 68.5094 million florins, including 40.1641 million for compulsory education, 20.5632 million for university education (including university laboratory research expenditures), and 7.7821 million for secondary education;
Education expenditure