Monday, November 28, 2022

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, November 24, 2022, Budget: Labor and Social

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/70, pp. 8126-8127.

Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honorable citizens.

To begin with: It is just two weeks that we stand here and debate the so-called Bürgergeld [citizens’ wage]. I was frankly amazed at this low point in the debate culture. Such abuses with which you have dismissed the opposition’s objections do not belong here.

Yet this thin skin also shows: You had not reckoned with the massive criticism which indeed did not come just from the associations and the Federal Budget Authority but also from the bases of your parties. Just so is to be explained the mitigation with which you under pressure are allowed to retire from some of the grossest blunders.

Yet what still remains is unfortunately scarcely better. There remains: The Bürgergeld is contra-productive, it invites abuse and it is a slap in the face of those who get up every morning to themselves work for their income. Worse still: It drastically increases the danger that people land in long-term unemployment and remain there. Who contests that has for long not spoken with the co-workers at the job centers, and this in a time in which there is scarcely anything more important than to put to work as many people as possible.  

Dear colleagues, today however we speak on what all of this costs and how it shall be financed.  And look: Where in the draft law 4.8 billion euros was still estimated for section 11 is now found only around 3 billion. You already need to finance heating costs from the 60s and that in its first year of introduction. What comes after? Do you then abolish the Bürgergeld if the receipts disappear as is now foreseeable?

As you know, we stand at the beginning of a difficult recession and a wave of business insolvencies. Many people will lose their work. Inflation increases further and thereby also the cost of living. Who can no longer support that may soon land in the social system. All of that in the future needs to paid for. I step by step ask myself: Where from?

The Ampel governs according to the motto: “Rule of Thumb – According to Cash on Hand” [„Pi mal Daumen – Nach Kassenlage“] and with eyes closed hopes for the best. All of this recalls the basic pension. There also an actually correct investment, namely the increase of means for the socially needy, was ideologically overburdened and against all reason perverted into its opposite.

And the basic pension was a prestige objective of Herr Heil. Yet, so as to cite Herr Habeck, it is, ja, “only money”. This quite metaphysical attitude explains with what grandiosity the taxpayers’ money will be dealt with.

The Ampel already in its first year of government made debts of around 550 billion euros. As if that were not enough: In the shadows besides pile up around 28 creatively entitled special funds for this and that and in a sum of billions – debts which do not emerge in the Federal budget, which nevertheless need to be paid back by our children and grandchildren – the latest being the Aktienrente [securities pensions]. It is fundamentally right to reconsider a long-term expansion and the apportionment financing in the pension insurance. Yet to do so as if the pension insurance could be made demographically secure with an injection of 10 billion euros is ridiculous.

For comparison: The volume of the mandated pension insurance already today amounts to around 330 billion euros per year, a third of which is tax subsidies. Therein is measured the sum which is dealt with here – not a drop on the hot stone. For an effect worthy of the name, a far higher contribution as a strong expenditure thus needs be planned for, and in fact yearly – if one then has the money. Instead, even the 10 billion euro injection needs to be financed on credit. Herr Lindner thus ambles along in the expectation that the yield on the capital investments in the long-term exceed the costs which he, on account of rising interest rates, must pay for. That is dangerous.

The alternative is on that account uncomfortable: Change course and save what the thing contains. All expenditures need to be on the test stand under the given: What is really necessary and sensible? What do we need to secure the economic foundations of the country? From what need we take leave?

Dear colleagues, nothing of this is recognized, nothing of this is willed. That is a cause for concern, since it permanently damages our country. Thus will further billions be sunk for ideological nonsense, while at the other end money is lacking, for example, for the appropriate endowment of hardship cases. That affects hundreds of thousands of pensioners in the east who many times live in poverty because, as you know, a portion of their pension was taken as a result of procedural failures in the transition in the West German pension law.    

The intended solution remains far behind the justified expectations. Even your SPD colleague Dulig designates it as – cite – “a political compromise to the smallest common denominator”.  It is too little, it helps nothing, and it is not appropriate to the people who so long await support. I therefore appeal to you: Enlarge this common denominator! Do what is right! For other things, the money is apparently there.

Many thanks.

 

 

[trans: tem]