German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/6, p.
251.
Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Right honorable Herr President. Esteemed citizens.
After a months-long inactivity of the old government, we
have since yesterday a new Federal government, a government which indeed
grandly proclaims to be a so-called government of the future, yet which
blatantly blanks out the entire present and sets its priorities elsewhere. Of
course while the inflation in Germany reaches the highest level in almost 30
years, thought in the coalition is given to the release of cannabis, a feminist
foreign policy, the granting of citizenship to any who come to Germany, etc.,
etc. The term “inflation” however appears in the whole of the coalition
contract one, single time.
Thereby the price explosion which we certainly are
experiencing, primarily in Germany, is the poisoned inheritance of the Merkel
coalition, with energetic support of the Greens. Taxes and duties in Germany are
at a most high level, and the just so senseless as sinfully expensive CO2
pricing heats up the inflation. For many families in the country, it will be a
sad Christmas in which it need be decided whether the house will be heated or
instead food or gifts be purchased. The situation is serious and acute, yet the
government does not take it seriously.
We presently have in Germany an official inflation rate of 5.2
percent. What does that mean? Everything becomes more expensive, correct. Yet
also the saved money becomes devalued, the old age care contribution, all loses
value – 5.2 percent in this year. When anyone, for example, has 20,000 euros in
the bank, then those 20,000 euros in the course of a year by means of inflation
are worth 1,000 euros less. These are the real effects of inflation. The rich
have no problem with inflation. They have invested in real estate and equities
which grow along with inflation. Businesses have no problem with inflation,
since they simply pass on the higher costs of production to the consumers.
States have no problem with inflation. They even find inflation to be a good
thing. Ultimately disappear at the same time the savings of their own citizens
and their own debts.
It is inconceivable to me how a party like the SPD, which in
sermons continually troubles itself over the cares of the little people, simply
cold-shoulders this powerful problem. Die
Ampel [traffic light coalition] has betrayed and sold the little people.
So ugly is this, and of this we must speak. We must however
not only speak but we must act, not in sometime in the coming years but here
and now. Our motion [Drucksache 20/191]
shows how it goes. We thereby move no money from the left pocket to the right,
by which we initially remove taxes from the people and then a portion of which
grandiosely again apportion, but relieve the citizens immediately and
appreciably by means of tax reductions: An abolition of the wretched CO2
tax whereby energy does not endlessly become more expensive and poor families
need not sit in cold housing in the winter; a reduction of sales tax for energy
to zero percent whereby the people who keep the country running can drive to
work in a car; an increase in the basic allowance for taxes so that more of the
fleeing Mittelstand may continue to
remain. All of these are measures which can be implemented in the short-term and
display immediate effect.
Let me here also speak just briefly on the role of the
European Central Bank; since we speak of the inflation which the ECB is not allowed
to overlook. The years-long zero interest rate policy and the money printing
orgies have created the prerequisites for the expropriation of the German
saver, those who have of course given up the D-mark. And instead of the ECB now
defending these people, to which they have entrusted their entire savings, “Madame
Inflation” Lagarde punctually fulfills the wishes of the bankrupt states in the
south. To this there must be a halt. Let us relegate the ECB to the place
pertaining to it in the treaties! Let us in common place ourselves in defense
of the German saver, and let us implement measures which really fight the
inflation!
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
