German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/164, pp. 21103-21104.
Right honorable Frau President. Dear colleagues. Dear taxpayers in the gallery.
Katharina Beck (SPD): We’re taxpayers , too!
And before all things: Dear tax kleptomaniacs – it cannot be otherwise said – of the Debts Coalition!
I want to again help you on the point upon which we speak here today. We are speaking on that the minimum livelihood be made tax free. This besides results from the ability to pay [Leisitungsfähigkeit] principle. Okay, that is difficult for the Greens, – it cannot be quite comprehended there – yet for the SPD meanwhile also.
I want to help you with the point of what the Constitutional Court said. We have today spoken so much of human dignity. The Constitutional Court actually derives this principle from the human dignity. I cite with the permission of the president:
It is accordingly not only not sensible when the state first takes from the citizen as tax a portion of his minimum livelihood, and afterwards returns the money to him in the form of support payments
– as for example in the form of social assistance, housing money and many other things. It is besides a principle which this Debts Coalition manages for years: To take money away from people so as to refund to them a small portion. No, the Constitutional Court further states that, as a result of such proceedings, people who actually were in the condition to live independently were forced into the position of a supplicant to state offices. That reveals precisely your policy, my dear friends of the Debts Ampel.
Yet let us come to the sobering numbers. Here, even the CDU has slumbered; the press here assembled has slumbered. The scandal of the Bürgergeld [citizens’ wage] increase on Januuary 1 of 12.1 percent, namely from 502 euros to 563 euros, occurred already on 1 January 2023. You of course then increased the basic allowance by merely 5.4 percent, while with the Bürgergeld introduction you just raised the old social assistance contribution from 449 euros to 502 euros; that is 11.8 percent. Reckoned as a basis percentage, you increased the Bürgergeld in not 15 months by around 25 percent.
Wolfgang
Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): That is falsified. That’s not right! That is wrong!
And in regards the basic allowance, you have not managed an increase of 12 percent. That reveals you for what you are. To that I say: Phooey, that’s shameful, what you are doing!
Marianne
Schieder (SPD): Na, na, na! Slow
down!
So as to support the same with facts, dear taxpayers up there:
(The
speaker holds up a diagram)
From one euro – this is from the Taxpayers Union – remains 47.5 euros cents.
Vice-president
Aydan Özoğuz: Herr member, in that regard, we have…
Print this!
Herr member, I am speaking with you.
(Member Kay Gottschalk (AfD) continues to speak)
Herr member, is it then so difficult to pause for a second?
But of course!
I am simply attempting to bring to your attention that we here have an understanding to display no drawings and pictures.
This is no picture. This is a graphic.
It was a graphic. Yet please refrain therefrom.
Good. I do so in the future. Thank you for the reference. My party since 2019 has here brought in multiple motions and draft laws and therein demanded increasing the basic allowance, or to introduce the tax schedule on wheels [Tarif auf Rädern] which is even in some of the elections programs of parties which have been present here. You have refused all of this with threadbare reasonings and prefer to increase the Bürgergeld in the last 13 months by 25 percent.
Your learning curve – it can, I believe, be stated – actually approaches asymptomatically the zero line. I hope that the voters at the next elections will correspondingly prepare a bill and make the X by the party which is really committed to the people who are working.
On our motion [Drucksache 20/10975] is the program name: “Observe the Wage Difference Rule [Lohnabstandsgebot] – Relieve Wage-earners and Mittelstand”, and the basic allowance in fact clearly increase – I believe I’ve made clear why it must be – to 14,000 euros. It needs be said: Herr Lindner has a bad conscience, you not. He undertook a small project and wanted tax relief in the future for foreign employees in the first three years. At least he recognized: For real skilled labor, how I would define it, Germany is quite unattractive. Yet this also applies for the home employees, ladies and gentlemen of the FDP. Perhaps be honest for once!
Herr Fuerst supports the whole, in which is stated in his study – I cite with permission of the President: "Who works full-time not always has more therefrom”, especially the people who earn between 4,000 euros and 5,500 euros and live in large cities; since then basic supplements and other supplements come to nothing. He calculated: When a labor force under this government changes from part-time to full-time, then it has 32 euros more.
You thus see: Only one party here in the German Bundestag is really committed for the people. We stand for that working people do not meanwhile become supplicants of a socialist state, ladies and gentlemen.
I am grateful for your attention.
[trans: tem]
