German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/216, p.
27308.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The illogic of red-green policy once again manifests itself
in all its distinctiveness in both of your motions. You first let your Fridays
for Future advance organization demonstrate for months for a CO2 tax,
and obligingly you have then also naturally introduced this CO2 tax
of the Federal government.
Despite your protests, Herr Beutin, it persists: For you of
the Linke and the Greens, the CO2 tax cannot be high enough. Instead
of the now introduced 25 euros per ton, you actually want 180 euros! That you
should please for once say to the voters out there.
Now you suddenly ascertain – and what a surprise – that the
climate hysteria fired up by you quite simply can no more be paid for by many
people. Ja, damn it all, whether the
citizens can afford a tax or not needs to be considered before the introduction
of the tax, and one may not out of ideological delusion rip off the citizens
with one duty after another without regard for the loss.
Since January 1 alone, you take in an additional 6 euros in
tax for every full tank.
Klaus Mindrup (SPD): Not a tax!
The CO2 tax will be more than doubled by the year
2025. With the 180 euros demanded by you, it would then even be 35 euros for
every full tank.
Yet that is only the tip of the iceberg. The effects of your
measures upon housing costs are much worse. By means of your rip off package,
heating costs increase about 20 percent and the renters’ union is figuring on
an additional rent increase of 200 euros per month for an average household.
All of this was known before you introduced these burdens
and now you of the Greens and the Linke want to conceal this government
bungling with your motions – what I name really a service opposition, right
honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Have you even once thought through which effects it would
have if your motions would actually be decided on? The great majority of
landlords are of course small landlords. Of an average age of 60 years, who
with the rent improve their pensions. With your motions, you now want that
these pensioners must pay the CO2 tax with their rents, without that
having influence on the renters’ heating condition or to be able to expect that
the additional burden owing to the CO2 tax could decline.
Model calculations show quite clearly and distinctly that a
typical required investment of 40,000 euros for insulation and heating comes to
a savings in heating costs of exactly 800 euros per year. The amortization thus
lasts 50 years,
Timon Gremmels (SPD): Such rubbish!
and that is only if the entire savings in heating costs was
taken as a basis.
Timon Gremmels (SPD): What, is that too complex for you?
Mark well: the average small landlord would then already be
110 years old, and your motion alters nothing of these facts.
Timon Gremmels (SPD): Milkmaid math!
The climate package and the CO2 tax included therein is and remains what the Federal Audit Authority since already a year has ascertained: Unfair and unsozial. It therefore must immediately be abolished.
[trans: tem]
