{"id":206905,"date":"2025-10-12T03:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T03:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/206905\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T03:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T03:29:07","slug":"budget-2026-cushions-the-poor-squeezes-the-middle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/206905\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget 2026 cushions the poor, squeezes the middle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>COMMENT | Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim\u2019s Budget 2026, worth RM419.2 billion, is smaller than last year\u2019s but is packed with handouts and cost-of-living measures.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a budget that should keep everyone\u2019s head above water during tough economic times, but in the end, many ordinary Malaysians feel as if they are merely treading water, instead of moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>The usual questions accompanied the unveiling of the budget. \u201cWhat\u2019s in it for me?\u201d, \u201cWill I get anything out of it?\u201d, \u201cWill the poor get poorer, and the rich richer?\u201d, \u201cHow will the middle class fare?\u201d, \u201cHow will subsidies and food poverty levels affect me?\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Malaysia\u2019s 1.6 million civil servants are almost always treated differently from the remaining 31 million population. How could Anwar forget? He, more than anyone else, understands&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COMMENT | Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim\u2019s Budget 2026, worth RM419.2 billion, is smaller than last year\u2019s but is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-206905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}