Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing
Old Age Poverty
German Bundestag,
December 11, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/133, pp. 16589-16590
[Ulrike
Schielke-Ziesing is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the
eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. She
is a public pensions administrator and a member of the Bundestag social
security committee. The Tafeln is a quasi-public institution providing low-cost
meals to people of low income throughout the country. Jörg Meuthen is a
national chairman of the AfD and leader of the AfD delegation in the European
Parliament. Hartz-IV is a large-scale unemployment compensation program.]
Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Dear citizens.
Today we speak on the theme of old age poverty, because at the Tafeln the alarm has been sounded,
because they are no longer equal to the urgent demand on their provisions and
because ever more old people must stand there, people of pension age. These people
have often worked an entire lifetime and now nevertheless are directed to
donated provisions.
For the same reason, dear colleagues, we could hold an hour of
debate because the DIW [German Institute of Economic Research] a short while
ago has stated that more people of old age no longer request basic security
although they have made a claim, having in fact gone to the office and
requested aid. For the same reason we could each week hold an hour of debate
because ever more old people cannot pay their rent or electric bill. And for
the same reason we could today request an hour of debate because in the meantime
– even in the pre-Christmas time – seniors
pulling deposit bottles out of trash bins becomes part of the image of the
German inner cities.
In other words: We are speaking today on the complete failure of
pension, labor market and social policy and the decades-long savings cuts in
the statutory pension insurance.
Wolfgang
Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): What is the AfD’s concept?
Marcus Kurth
(Greens): You want to completely destroy the pension insurance!
Nowhere in Europe do the citizens pay so high a contribution from
their income, nowhere in Europe do they keep so comparatively little of their
pay and nowhere in Europe must they work so long for it.
Matthias W.
Birkland (Linke): To follow Herr Meuthen would only be worse.
That is the desired policy since 2001. That is the sorry sum of
your policy.
The statutory pension insurance, the once reliable basis for the
old age care of all contributors, is only one support; that is to say, the people themselves must freely provide the
corporate and private old age care.
Achim Kessler
(Linke): What then is the AfD’s pension concept?
The SPD, with its reform of Hartz-IV, has created a long-term,
low-income sector. This low-income sector is no peripheral matter but is today
a structural problem. In 2017, over 32% of the people in my state of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had less than 2,000 euros gross at their disposal. Mark well:
The 2,000 euros refers to qualified employees. The less qualified employees
naturally earn less.
Do you know in which occupations the people of Germany earn very
little? The cleaning occupations, followed by the tourism branch and the
employees of hotels and gas stations. Tourism for us in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is
an important branch of the economy. The employees in the tourism branch toil
twelve-hour shifts for starvation wages. What does that have to do with the
pension topic? Low wages later become low pensions.
Add to this the continual reduction of the pension level from 55
percent in the year 1990 to around 48 percent today. And he who has the possibility to privately provide, with for example a corporate pension, will have
his payment reduced by some 19 percent
by the double contribution for sickness and care insurance. And he who
as a small investor wants to improve his pension with a securities savings plan,
as required by policy for years, will soon have the yield taxed away.
Ulli Nissen
(SPD): “Yield taxed away”? What’s with that nonsense?
Moreover, the German pension insurance for years has been burdened
with ever more non-insurance obligations. The payments thereto are in the
meantime made known: In 2017, over 31 billion euros, and this year over 34 billion euros; money with which
old age poverty could be ameliorated if the pension insurance had it.
Thus it is good – and I welcome it – that we here today have the opportunity
to speak of this, primarily since the coalition delegations are presently more
occupied with themselves and their troubled relations than with a reasonable
pension concept.
I honestly find it refreshing that it is the basic pension that
the CDU/CSU wants to first toss overboard should the SPD take leave of the
government. That is understandable, since that concept is trash. It is
expensive, unworkable and unjust.
On that, all the experts are agreed, from the Bertelsmann
foundation to the OECD. Yet then, dear colleagues, and not only those of the
left, I ask you: If you so take to heart the struggle against old age poverty
then why have you not agreed to our motion in committee which comprises exactly
what is unanimously demanded by the experts, namely an allowance resolution [Freibetragslösung] for the basic old age
security?
Matthias W.
Birkwald (Linke): Because we have a much better motion and a
better concept.
That would be the simplest and safest way to relieve the
low-income pensioner. Can it be that you have not agreed to the motion only
because it comes from us?
Bernd Baumann
(AfD): Exactly!
You should yet again reconsider your position in regards the poor
pensioner. Today’s hour of debate shall give you the opportunity.
Many thanks.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
