Alice
Weidel
2018
Federal Government Budget
German
Bundestag, May 16, 2018, Plenarprotokoll 19/32, pp. 2971-2973
[Alice Weidel
is a chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland delegation in the German Bundestag. Finance
Minister Olaf Scholz is a member of the SPD. Claudia Roth is a member of
Bündnis90/Grünen.]
Right
honorable Herr President. Dear colleagues.
The budget is
the nerve of the State. It therefore must be withdrawn from the profane eyes of
the subjects.
This
thesis, attributed to Cardinal Richelieu, have you obviously subscribed to for
decades since, with the presentation of the budget, punctually begins the smoke
and mirrors. Instead of sending in new wine to the sovereign, the citizen,
strong sermons are to be administered. And beyond that, you feel yourselves no further
obligated to the Reichstag inscription, “To the German People”. The people you
yourselves wish to select and compile.
You
speak of a balanced budget [schwarzen Null], yet in truth the German taxpayer
sits on an enormous mountain of debt which future generations will inherit.
Year after year, the current finance minister, be it Olaf Scholz or those of
yesterday, runs up the debt. How does that work? Quite simple. Simply not all
expenditure items will be entered in the budget. Where, for example, is the EU
appropriation to be found? Right – nowhere. The approximate 30 billion euros
transferred from Germany to Brussels is secluded in the budget. After Brexit,
the entry will soon become even greater. The liabilities for and the guarantees
of other euro member nations, banks and various euro rescue funds are gigantic,
to say nothing of the Target-2 settlements for which we pay with our exports.
Generally
only a portion of the actual debt is made public. There is of course the shadow
indebtedness which you have hung like a millstone around the neck of the
younger generation. The economist Raffelhüschen has in his generational
accounting shown that the total debt piled up by the federal, state and local
governments runs to an unbelievable 7 trillion euros, this in addition to the
future statutory payments and obligations of the social security system, as
well as your public pensions. I put the question, is that really responsible
fiscal policy?
You
speak of responsibility, yet in truth you shamelessly squander the very
sovereignty of the parliament, the budget authority, “no taxation without
representation”…which is the very basis of any parliamentary democracy. The
federal government’s constitution quite clearly asserts:
As
representatives of the people, the elected members of the German Bundestag must
…maintain control over the fundamental fiscal decisions.
The German
Bundestag may not transfer its fiscal responsibility to other agents by means
of indeterminate fiscal empowerment.
You
nevertheless have agreed to the bail-out protection, a perpetual, automatic
financial mechanism, and you celebrate the plan of President Emmanuel Macron –
no opposition to the gigantic transfer of German tax revenue, no opposition to
an EU finance minister. Entirely otherwise. It appears you cannot too quickly
transfer responsibility to Paris and Brussels, and with it the taxpayers’
money, which you here have never earned, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
You
assert that your budget is socially just. Actually, Germany has one of the
highest income and expenditure burdens of all western nations. By your absurd
tax policy are primarily the middle and low
income earners and, before all, the families burdened. The taxpayer
additionally bleeds with the melting away of his savings by the interest
savings provided to the State by the EZB’s zero and negative interest rate policy.
The State relieves itself of its debts at the cost of the saver and the
taxpayer, and then speaks of the balanced budget! What is just, what is social,
about that, right honorable ladies and gentlemen? It is nothing other than a
looting of the taxpayer by the lords of the manor that you here are practicing.
While the infrastructure of this country collapses and the State is no longer
capable of protecting the citizen, billions flow to the reception and support
of illegal immigrants in the social system.
It is horrifying: in 20 years at the latest,
every fifth retiree will be at the basic income level. Despite a lifetime of hard
work, today countless seniors have scarcely enough to live on. Two examples
from Bochum: One, Herbert W., till the middle of the seventies a day laborer,
later at Opel, who for many years paid into the retirement system, on weekends
collects trash out front of the Ruhr stadium to improve his crummy little
pension. The other, Sami A., also earlier pursued a difficult calling; he was
Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard. He who has never paid into the German social
system, on weekends drives his moped through the park, receives from the State
1,200 euros a month, and this, believe it or not, for ten years! This is in my
eyes an injustice crying to heaven for which you must answer!
You
maintain that the budget is oriented toward the future. On the contrary, you
dismantle the opportunities of future generations. The basis of our nation is
the people who live and work here. Yet it is not only the people who live and
work here now but also those who will live here in the future. Indeed we have
the principal responsibility for the people, the families, who have long lived
here, and these are people who you are
to serve. The duty of the State is to administer, as trustee of the welfare of
the German people, the people’s wealth built up over generations, and not to
recklessly fling it out the window. The owner is the German citizen and not
you, not the government!
Since
1972, in Germany each year fewer children have been born than people have died.
For the viability of a capable nation,
that is a problem. What have you done about it? Nothing. At least, nothing
real. Since you are exclusively for compensatory immigration – you indeed say
that all the time. The birth rate of the Moslem immigrants of course appears
entirely otherwise. Even the fattening of the population with immigrant
criminals with multiple identities appears not to bother you at all.
Thus,
I can say to you: Burkas, headscarf girls [Kopftuchmädchen], subsidized
knifemen and other such good-for-nothings will not secure our welfare,
economic growth and, above all, the social state!
Sören Bortol (SPD): That is pure
incitement!
Völker Kauder (CDU/CSU): Shame on
you!
To
that end is required, Herr Kauder, a qualified, not an unplanned, unbridled,
unstructured, immigration. Germany has long since become a borderless
immigration land for the unqualified and an emigrant land for the well
qualified.
Anton Hofreiter
(Bundnis 90/Die Grünen): You revel in your own loathsomeness. That is really repellent.
And
what have you done about it? Who in the future will come up with the
income? Who will pay for the public
pensions; even yours, Herr Hofreiter, you wailing child? Your immigrant gold
pieces, perhaps? You don’t really believe that.
To
you, the citizens appear to be all the same. You want to confine yourselves to
managing the downfall of our country. To some extent, we have the impression
that you are even enthusiastic for it. Yet that will simply suit your order of
values. When a Bundestag vice president runs about a transparency featuring:
“Germany, you poor piece of – “, to which all here have contributed in that you
voted for her as Bundestag vice president – I am speaking of Claudia Roth –
then one must no longer wonder about anything in this honorable house.
The
AfD, on the contrary, is enlisted for responsibility, justice and a viable
future. Therefore, we require, first, a rigorous audit. All the figures must
finally be laid out openly on the table.
Second,
we require that the social state be secured and the future formed. The strategy
of a replacement of generations by means of unregulated immigration, partly
from cultures hostile to women, has proven itself to be the wrong way. The
common welfare can only be secured with investments in secure borders and the
coming generations.
Third,
we want an authentic equity of taxation. Middle and low income earners must
finally receive true relief. The basic exemption must at last be raised; 2,000
euros gross a month tax free. That would have once been visionary. Yet it cannot
still be that a skilled worker earning 1.3 times the median compensation must
already be made to pay the top tax payment. I can say to you, it is time for
real tax relief.
Fourth,
no further hollowing-out of sovereignty. The ultimate authority over our budget
belongs in Berlin and not in Brussels.
In
this spirit, I close with a former citation of the Czech president Zeman, which
has already been presented to you by the honorable former CDU member, Erika
Steinbach. I quote:
In case you live
in a land in which you are prosecuted for fishing without a license, yet not
for illegal border crossing without satisfactory travel documents, then you
have the complete right to say, This country is governed by idiots!
Bundestag
President Wolfgang Schäuble: Frau colleague Weidel, you have in your speech,
among others used the terms “headscarf girls and good-for-nothings”. You
thereby discriminate against all women who wear a headscarf.
Alice Weidel (AfD): No!
Therefore,
I am calling you to order.
[Translated
by Todd Martin]
