Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The draft law aims at committing the tax law as the most
important instrument for the stabilization and the strengthening of the
business cycle – as it says in the grounds – so as to ameliorate the economic
consequences of the pandemic. The previous speakers enumerated the several
measures: Degressive AfA [depreciation allowance], loss deduction, tax-free
nursing bonus, extension of the home office allowance, and many other things
more.
The CDU/CSU delegation’s motion to amend aims in the same
direction with numerous demands which in the last two years were proposed by
the AfD delegation many times. As is usual in this house, they were all also
reflexively rejected by the CDU.
In this time of political agony also occurs the senseless
revival of the real property tax. That was tax memorial care, the opposite of
reform.
Frauke Heiligstadt (SPD): Speak on the theme!
In these days, the owners of 35 million pieces of land
receive a mountain of paper so as to ascertain their real property values.
Under supplementary point 1, urgently proposed by us, a time extension for
overcoming this bureaucracy monster is hereby requested. Already in the
Kirchhoff proposal for authentic tax reform of ten years ago, the real property
tax no longer occurs, and in the head of every tax reformer it also no longer
occurs.
In the grounds for the CDU/CSU motion, it further says that
the persistently high inflation and the low growth of the economy could be
indicators of a stagflation. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, that is in
fact the state of understanding. The inflation rate of April of this year was
at 7.4 percent. The energy costs have climbed in a year’s comparison by 35
percent; natural gas with 47.5 percent has contributed to the price climb, and
the heating oil with 98.6 percent.
The ghost of inflation in the EU thus comes to life – which was
to be expected. For years, we were told that inflation was defeated. Then an
inflation of under but near 2 percent was the new price stability – the ECB’s
own house definition. As the inflation rate moved over the 2 percent line, the
narrative of the symmetric inflation goals was applied so as to somehow talk
away this process. These days, the ECB divulges – I cite:
We believe that inflation in the course of this year will recede and in the next and following years will be much lower than in this year.
How can one explain this degree of denial of reality? The
U.S. central bank certainly needed to raise the interest rates to fight
inflation. The ECB instead manages commission work for the “Club Med” of the
Romance states which for years command the ECB Council – of the ECB’s
independence, there is not a trace. Frau Lagarde was and is a French
politician. Of economics she understands, incidentally mentioned, nothing.
The only interest of this majority and its president is to
protect the over-indebted Romance countries from state insolvency. If the
European interest rates are raised, the costs climb for the state debts. If
inflation remains or becomes greater, the state debts melt away. That is the
leading maxim of Lagarde and her Club. There, a German central bank governor
has not a chance. Better therefore that he resign to take his hat, as in the
case recently of two German economists.
The stock of central bank money has increased since 2008 to
the end of this year from 880 billion euros to 6 trillion euros; that is a
sevenfold increase of the money supply. In the same time, the GDP in the
eurozone has climbed by about 32 percent. That means a money supply increase of
600 percent in the face of an economic growth of 32 percent, a proceeding which
would be inconceivable with a really independent Bundesbank.
The financing of state budgets by means of central bank
presses, de-coupled from real goods production, has in the history of mankind
always led to state crises. The zero and negative interest rates policy for
years strengthens the effect of this unchecked debts policy. The ECB in large
part co-financed the members states’ debts excesses, and thereby initially
enabled it. The state debts of the euro countries have grown since the
financial crisis from 6.7 trillion euros to 11.3 trillion euros; more than 200
times were the stability criteria ripped up, naturally without sanctions.
Frauke Heiligstadt (SPD): Theme!
From this 4.6 trillion euro growth of debts which produces
this inflation, with which you tinker, the ECB alone has taken 76 percent onto
its own books by means of the purchase of state loans. It has thereby in a striking
manner violated the express ban on state financing according to Article 123 of
the AEUV.
Nadine Heselhaus (SPD): Wrong!
The EuGH [European High Court] naturally sees all of that
differently because there the majority of the judges is the same as that on the
ECB Council and in the [EU] Commission.
Frauke
Heiligstadt (SPD): We are speaking on the Corona tax assistance act!
Markus Herbrand (FDP): The inflation speech, that comes tomorrow afternoon!
The EU Commission accompanies the debts madness with an
additional, even so counter to regulation indebtedness of its own, to the sum
of 828 billion euros for so-called resilience measures for over-indebted
states.
Why all of this? A breaking apart of the EU regime shall be
prevented at any price – “whatever it takes”. Who wants to transform this Union
into a great state, as it is foreseen in the coalition contract, must destroy
many national democracies which were united to prevent such a development. He
wants and will produce an ungovernable something which takes the place of national
states, which can only be democracies; only they can be democracies!
Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP) Oh!
Precisely that is what the EU conference has aimed at as a result,
with 800 biased [gezinkten]
participants: 800, of 550 million inhabitants. That had to have been a partial
acceptance of representative opinion.
What will now be done by this government by means of
placebos for energy costs, by means of short-term relief for energy taxes and
even by means of delayed improvement in the area of business taxes, is the
attempt to repair at the national level the failures of the EU and the ECB. Right
honorable ladies and gentlemen, this will not succeed.
The EU states find themselves in a dilemma. The inflation
will lead either to a massive contraction of the population’s purchasing power
and to a mass expropriation of savers, or we will again experience a state
debts crisis which is not be mastered.
Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU): Wrong speech!
I come to an end, Frau President.
Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU): “Frau President”, that is good!
All of this will put into question the existence of the euro,
whether it suits you or not. We will abstain from the draft law put forward, we
will vote for the CDU/CSU motion.
Yet both, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, will change
nothing of the general weather conditions which I have sketched for you.
Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU): Herr Glaser, it is no longer a Präsidentin!
Albrecht Glaser
(AfD): Sorry! I cannot see behind!
[trans: tem]
