The Opposition yesterday made a pre-Budget plea for tax cuts.

Shadow Finance Minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin also called for an increase in spending on housing, seniors and tourism.

"The Government is not a corporation that operates for profit. The international business community have been the cash cows for this Government and I think it's time they have to stop to arrest the milking process ? put away the milking cans ? and allow the business community to understand they are not there only to be taken advantage of."

Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin said the operating costs of international business had continued to sky-rocket.

"We believe that the Government has addressed this in the coming Budget, and we should well see some relief from payroll tax, and an adjustment to the exempt CAP, currently at $235,000 per annum. This is effectively a catch up from over-assessment of the past few years."

She said Government had to learn to gauge its needs based on the programmes they wanted to provide.

Opposition Senator E.T. (Bob) Richards also weighed in ahead of Finance Minister Paula Cox's Budget today.

He accused Government of bad fiscal planning, since money had been left over for years in a row.

"It's not good to have money sloshing around Government looking for a project. That's not the way it's supposed to work. It's supposed to work that you decide what you are going to do and then raise the money for it."

The public should enjoy Bermuda's good economy ? and it would be disappointing if there were no tax cuts today.

The Opposition also called for relief in the upper limit of employee contribution to payroll tax, now set at 4.75 percent.

"We do not need Government to storehouse the public's money," said Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin.

"It is noteworthy that last year's Budget, and the three Budgets preceding last year's in total required nearly $200 million more in tax payer funds than was required to provide the services and programmes that the Government had indicated that they will do," Mrs. Gordon-Pamplin said.

Government had to increase funds for living accommodations, she said, as the housing problem had reached crisis magnitude.

"We refer to the 2002 Budget by the PLP in which there was a promise to build two major rooming houses in the City of Hamilton for single males, in order to help alleviate the pressing need for that type of accommodation, especially in light of the then imminent closure of the Canadian Hotel," she said. "Interestingly enough, in 2006, when the hotel owners advised that they could no longer keep the doors open, there is a scattershot approach to using the upper floor of a building at Southside ? and not one brick has been laid in satisfying the four-year-old promise. If anything could have been planned certainly this was it."

The $50 million additional costs at the second senior school could have addressed the housing aspect of the Social Agenda, she said.

"Further, a cry by our seniors that their pensions are too little, the medicines are too expensive, their food out of reach of their meagre earnings and their healthcare costs have sky-rocketed beyond their ability to cope should bring a sense of responsibility and compassion by the Government to address these pressing social problems," she said.

When funds are made available on today's Budget, she said Bermuda can breathe a sign of relief and say 'High time' that financially-strapped seniors had finally been thrown a life-line.

More money should also be spent on a tourism, she said, if only to stop job-losses.