German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/232, pp.
29877-29878.
Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
There is on the website of the Federal government:
At the determination of the German Bundestag,
the Federal government is required to regularly submit in the middle of the
legislative period a poverty and wealth report as an instrument for examining political
measures…
The middle of the legislative period is a year and a half
past and the Federal government has still submitted nothing. This leaves us
only one conclusion: The Federal government wants to get the parliamentary
confrontation out of the way. The AfD delegation however will not let that
pass, and on that account we have requested this debate. Since the public has a
right to be told that in Germany every fifth child grows up in poverty, that 69
percent of all single parents are in danger of impoverishment, that, as the
skilled labor shortage is deplored, we have however 2.1 million young people
under 34 who have no occupational certificate, that in Germany the chances of
rising are worse than in the 80s, that every fifth is
working in the low wage sector and that many of them, after deductions for rent, electricity costs, gas
money and the cost of a visit to the zoo for the children, have less in the
pocket than one of approximately 2 million foreigners drawing Hartz-IV, of whom
many have never paid a cent into our social system.
The public should be told that for years old-age poverty
increases, that 1.3 million pensioners need to work on the side and that ever
more pensioners take their meals at the Tafel.
For the Federal government’s policy, all of this is a testimony of poverty.
It is in our view the highest time for exactly the effective
measures which we with our motion [Drucksache
19/30403] here submit, and it begins primarily with a stop to the looting
of the contributors [Lesitungsträger]
in our country. We demand the writing into the Basic Law of an obligatory brake
on taxes and duties. We demand the abolition of the Renewable Energy Law
apportionment so that electricity is again affordable. We demand the enabling
of asset accumulation by means of real property ownership. We demand the
support of younger families with a
marriage starter credit and a fiscal family-splitting. We demand a stop to wage-dumping
by means of illegal mass migration and the EU’s freedom of movement. And we
demand an end to the asset-annihilating zero interest rate policy of European
Central Bank. We need all of this.
What we do not need is Work ‘til you drop [ein Arbeiten bis zum Umfallen]. And on
that account is the debate on the pension at 68 fundamentally false. I
personally know masons, painters, gas and water installers, drywallers and
scaffolders who are in pain at 50, work hard and go to bed in pain. They are
happy when at 60 years they are still able to work. A pension at 68 for this group
means in fact a pension cut and ja, das
ist asozial.
The demand for a longer working lifetime is besides no
demand from the ivory tower of science, but a demand from the middle of the CDU.
I recall just the appeal of Christoph Ploss, the CDU chairman in the Hansestadt of Hamburg. What do we know
of him? Abitur, civilian service, Bachelor, Master, press advisor, Bundestag.
Occupations for the sake of which the man has never held a brick in hand, yet
nevertheless wants to say to those who everyday move thousands of bricks and
carry the two-ton levelling to the fourth floor that they should work longer. Ladies
and gentlemen, one is not at all to be astonished when the people out there no
longer desire this politics. You here need not wonder when the political sulk increases
and the loss of trust grows. Herr Ploss besides goes – like all of us here in
the German Bundestag – after four years in the Bundestag, if he then goes, with
a pension claim of 1,000 euros; that is more than what the average pensioner in
Germany receives.
Ladies and gentlemen, we demand an abolition of the
politicians’ pension and an inclusion of politicians in the statutory Pension
Insurance. And we demand something else, namely that the priorities be set
correctly. The Federal government transfers billions in Kindergeld [child subsidy] to foreign countries in Europe. We pay
23 billion euros per year in refugee costs. We will transfer to Brussels this
year 44 billion euros. From there, it will be distributed to countries where
the pension level is higher and the working lifetime and pension entry age are
lower. Stop telling the people of this country that there is no money for the
pension.
Vice-president
Claudia Roth: Please think of your speaking time.
I come to conclusion. – The money is there, but the
priorities of the old parties, of the Federal government, are falsely set. Our
priorities lie with the contributors and with their families. We stand for a
social, sustainable, a child- and family-friendly Germany.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
