Marc Bernhard, December 6, 2024, Heating Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/204, pp. 26450-26451. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Last year, the Ampel, against every sense and reason, come hell or high water, flogged the heating law through the Bundestag, without regard to loss, and thereby practically banned the new installation of oil and gas heating. 

Konrad Stockmeier (FDP): Wrong!

30 million households, thus around 64 million people, heat with oil and gas. That means that 75 percent of the people in Germany are directly affected by your heating hammer, and regardless whether owner or renter. Yet it was already clear prior to the passage that for many it will be unaffordable, that it destroys the old age provision of many millions of people, and is nothing other than a cold expropriation. Your heating hammer makes the costs of dwellings and heating unaffordable for many people. 

It was previously also fully clear that your heating hammer is absolutely ineffective; since even the most optimistic estimates of Habeck’s ministry proceed on a yearly savings of just one, single percent of the total German CO₂ emissions – thus, the CO₂ quantity which China blows into the air in just five hours. And for that, you destroy the savings, the old age provision and the prosperity of the people in our country? How crazy are you, actually? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): That is a rhetorical question!

Had you simply done nothing, but simply just let the last three nuclear power plants continue to run, 

            Bernhard Herrmann (Greens): Ach, you heat with atomic power, or what?                            Nonsense!

we would each year – just listen for once – save 15 million tons of CO₂, thus double as much as by your entire heating hammer. 

Even Construction Minister Geywitz has practically confirmed here in a questioning in the Bundestag that, with the heating hammer, what demonstrably works was forbidden, without really knowing, without having any functioning plan, as to how the people instead should heat in the future. 

Almost every second municipal utility considers an affordable heating supply no longer secure on account of your heating hammer. The city of Leipzig ascertained that the implementation of the heating hammer for Leipzig alone costs 30 billion euros. 

            Karsten Hilse (AfD): It’s only money!

That is 45,000 euros from infants to old men. No one can pay for this madness. 

Mannheim in 2035 as the first city in Germany completely disconnects people from the gas network. And thus happens exactly what I had said many times last year in the Bundestag: On account of your heating law, people now need to tear out new heating in the most brief time because it does not suit their city’s heating plan. 

Yet the crowning is that you of the FDP, then still in the government, yourselves had reckoned, before passage of the heating law, that the heating hammer will cost the people the unimaginable sum of 2,500 billion euros, and despite that, you in common with red-green, against better judgment, against every reason, simply forced through this law. 

And now? After the Chancellor showed you the door, you suddenly want to know nothing more at all of this. You, like the Chancellor, can remember nothing more, simply assert the opposite, and apparently want to rescind the law which you yourselves introduced. Thus, how credible your turnaround actually is, you can here and now give evidence by you voting for our motion [Drucksache 14031]. 

The same applies to you of the CDU. In all media, you announce that you want to rescind the heating law – exactly as Jens Spahn a couple of minutes ago here in the Bundestag confirmed – thus exactly what we today propose. 

If you of the CDU and the FDP thus really meant it seriously, then we would have for this today a majority. Yet you know quite precisely that with the reds and greens with whom you want to form a coalition in the future, there will never be a revocation. Thus show whether you mean it seriously, 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Many thanks.

or whether you are only once again lying to the people out there.

[trans: tem]

 

 

Bernd Schattner, October 9, 2024, Mittelstand

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/190, p. 24713. 

Many thanks. Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

For thirty years, I myself was a businessman before I came here to the Bundestag three years ago. And I ever again realize: The German economy is meanwhile at the abyss. And what does this Ampel government do? With open eyes, it lets our country slide into ruin. While the German industry bleeds to death, the Mittelstand fights for survival and the citizens ask themselves how they shall pay for their electrical and heating costs, this government lives in its ideological bubble. Wishful thinking instead of economic policy, that is your sorry balance after three years of Ampel. 

Let’s begin with the energy policy. Germany has the highest electricity prices in all Europe. 

            Reinhard Houben (FDP): Not right! Wrong!

On the average, according to Destatis, private households pay 41 cents per kilowatt-hour, while in France it is just 25 cents. The reason: Your headlong energy transition. 

            Reinhard Houben (FDP): That is still wrong! 

            Lukas Köhler (FDP): Nonsense!       

All of you, from the SPD to the CDU/CSU over there, have taken care that the nuclear power plants in Germany be disconnected, without providing a secure and affordable alternative. Instead, you stuck billions into the construction of renewable energies without regard to the consequences. The result: Energy-intensive business fled to foreign countries. The BASF, for example, once one of our leading businesses here in Germany, shifts a large part of its production to China and the U.S.A.. That means loss of work in Germany by the hundreds of thousands. 

And who bears this burden? The German citizens and the Mittelstand. Since January 2023, the energy costs for many businesses have risen around 80 percent – 80 percent! How shall small firms, manufacturing undertakings and family businesses support that? You speak of a climate-neutral transformation, yet this transformation for many firms simply means ruin. 

The Mittelstand, the backbone of our economy, is completely ignored by you. The numbers speak a clear language: Over 70,000 businesses in the year 2023 have announced insolvency. That is already 17 percent more than in the previous year. Especially affected are small- and mid-sized businesses which for years suffer under rising energy prices, high duties and your bureaucracy entirely distant from reality. Instead of acting here, you ignore this development, and further intensify the situation by means of senseless prescriptions like the supply chain law or the planned CO₂ pricing. 

And now let us speak of your catastrophic debts policy; the new budget needs to come, ja, at some time or other. In the year 2023, we reached a new record: The state indebtedness lies at 2.48 trillion euros. In the next year alone, you plan new debts to the sum of 45 billion euros. These debts will burden our children and grandchildren for decades. Yet instead of finally beginning a change of course, you continue as before and drive the country further into financial ruin. 

The reality which you do not want to see: The German economy finds itself officially in recession. In the year 2023, the gross domestic product shrank around 0.3 percent. For 2024, the Federal government itself now reckons with a further recession of 0.2 percent. And the OECD expects for 2025 a minimal growth of just 0.4 percent – far under the European average. 

Our neighbor countries grow while Germany stagnates or shrinks. You could not entice even Intel to Germany with 10 billion euros more. 

The tax and duties burden in Germany is crushing. Germany has the world’s highest tax quota. 42 percent of income on the average goes to the state. And in regards business, it does not appear better: With an effective tax burden of 29.8 percent, Germany is far above the EU average of 21.7 percent. Countries like Ireland or Estonia pull away economically because they have more favorable business taxes and fewer bureaucratic hurdles. And what do you do? Instead of sinking the tax burden, you introduce still more prescriptions which stifle business. The bureaucracy costs in Germany for the German economy amount each year to around 55 billion euros. 

And now comes the height of absurdity: Your so-called migration policy. While you expend ever more money for uncontrolled immigration, ever less remains left over for the German pensioners, families and employees. In the year 2023, you have levied 36 billions euros alone for the social duties in the migration context. At the same time, German pensioners need to gather deposit bottles so as to make ends meet. That is a bare-faced insult. That is a betrayal of one’s own people. 

My conclusion: Germany needs no utopian transformation which leads to economic catastrophe. We need an authentic economic transition. An end to the ruinous energy transition. An end to the crushing tax and duties burden. And an end to the ideological patronizing of citizens and business. An end to the Ampel economic experiment. Dear colleagues of the FDP, if you want to do something good for the economy: Put an end to the Ampel! What Germany now needs is a policy oriented to reality, a policy for our citizens, for our business and for our future. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, September 27, 2024, Pensions and Children

German Bundestag, September 27, 2024, Plenarprotokoll 20/189, pp. 24585-24586. 

Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honorable citizens. 

In the Middle Ages, it was common to attempt to heal the sick by draining them of blood by the liter – the sicker, the more and the more often. That, for most, did not turn out well. At some time, one became smarter and abandoned that. Gott sei Dank! 

Yet the Federal government still today thinks of stabilizing the statutory pension by operating on one artery after another. I do not now speak by way of exception of non-insurance benefits, but of the irregular and multiple cutting of the Federal added subsidy within three years until 2027 of a total 10 billion euros. These lopped-off billions will not be invested in, for example, a Generations Capital, but they are simply gone, disappeared into the depths of the Federal government’s budget holes – money which is lacking for the Pension Insurance. 

And thus these cuts lead to that the Pension Insurance’s reserves empty much earlier, and for that the contribution increases earlier and further than planned. The German Pension Insurance Union figures into the reckoning contribution rates of 22.4 percent up to 2040. It is not mentioned that it remains there. The basic reason for that is the limit line for the pension level, which was called up by the SPD only so long as to maintain the shaky construction until the Ampel is history, and a new government of shambles may sweep up. 

In this situation, the government tinkers with a so-called Generations Capital at the pump – beyond the debt brake and with the corresponding subsequent costs. The Federal Audit Authority has calculated that the yield from this Generations Capital can bring by 2039 a relief of the contribution of, believe it or not, 0.4 percentage points, if at all. The German Pension Insurance is rightly concerned that this more likely may not come; which is to say, contribution payments to the account for that will also be ordered. With an authentically funded support for old age insurance, as in, for example, Finland, Canada, Japan or Sweden, this Generations Capital has nothing to do. 

Ja, but why then is it done? Because Herr Scholz has so decided and Herr Lindner so far does not contradict, 

            Hermann Gröhe (CDU/CSU): Where is he, actually?

even when this does not suit colleague Vogel. And precisely that, I do not understand. His colleague Mordhorst said quite openly – cite: “The SPD lies in the face of pensioners and workers.” The Federal Budget Authority expresses it somewhat more finely and figures the added expenditures for the pension package until 2045 at, believe it or not, 507 billion euros, paid by the young people and those yet to be born. 

            Markus Kurth (Greens): But distributed over 20 years!

It is now well established that these generations will not at the outset receive from the pension account what they may pay in; in any event, that the increasing contribution for each employee will soon amount to nearly a year’s vacation. The question is whether these generations can then still at all afford a vacation. 

All of that, dear colleagues, needs not be. It is possible to stabilize the pension system, long-term and prudently. I am thus glad to here today bring in our motion [Drucksache 20/11847] with the title “For a Secure Pension for Our Children”, which does precisely that: Secures the pension long-term, and in fact quite without new debts. 

That will be possible by means of a goal-oriented savings plan for which the state pays in monthly 100 euros for every child of a German citizen, born here and living here permanently up to the age of 18. What is gathered there shall then be administered by a community foundation [Gemenschaftsstiftung]. As a result of the long time period and the compound interest effect, it is possible, with a very reasonable commitment, to save up real wealth specific to a person. We are speaking here of a total 21,600 euros per child, stretched as was said over 18 years. That yields, with a return on capital of four percent, around 214,000 euros. Dear colleagues, that is a generations capital – sensible, feasible and affordable. 

Many thanks.

[trans:tem]

 

Peter Boehringer, September 13, 2024, Delayed Bankruptcy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/186, p. 24196. 

Frau President. 

Following this week’s debates, it is increasingly confirmed: The government attempts everything to drag itself through to the autumn of 2025. And furthermore, no clarity is created for the central questions of the draft budget. 

How perchance should one deal with the giant gaps in the two fully distinct military estimates? For one with the regular costs for a Bundeswehr for the defense of Germany: Legitimate expenditures, yet even today and first of all, quite unclearly financed in the finance planning time frame. For another with the expenditures for misguided foreign missions, primarily for the Ukraine war which in addition is not our war. Billions in costs for direct and indirect German participation in war, concealed by an EU peace facility, a 50 billion EU Ukraine facility and in a Federal budget by the so-called post-procurement [Nachbeschaffung] of material, which however means nothing other than the physical donation of Bundeswehr material for use at a foreign front. German weapons will be given to Zalenskyi and then post-procured; that is in x places in the budget: Pro forma for the Bundeswehr. Here, the Bundeswehr is misused as a transshipment warehouse for an unfortunate and lost war which needs to be solved diplomatically. 

Then your sustainability budget for 2024. That the Ampel on account of the fully “unexpected” worsened business cycle still brings in the autumn of the current year a sustainability budget is a novelty in the history of budgets. Thereby will now be obtained the indebtedness margin, increased 11 billion euros by purely technical formula, ten months after the issuance of the original budget. That is not serious, particularly as the Ampel embezzles transaction proceeds from the sale of the Bund’s silverware – over 4.1 billion euros –, simply illegal in the accounting, so that then the debt brake will no longer be observed for the fifth year in a row. 

Colleague Bury plainly said something correct, and for another reason is this budget again not constitutional. 

The Ampel here besides profits from the evil fruits of its own policy. Since of course the origins of the worsened economic activity were the years-long oppressive and fraudulent Corona preventive measures, the world’s dumbest energy policy, and the omnipresent, false incentive which you set above all with the planned economy CO₂ religion. Only that allowed you, on the basis of the somewhat questionable debts logic of Article 115 of the Basic Law, to today also obtain an extra 11 billion. 

There still continues to be some billions in risks in the budget which you yourselves have created. The risk of still further excess EEG compensations due to the planned economic guaranty price, the risk of a further exploding citizens’ wage [Bürgergeld], the risk of an abolition of the solidarity surtax, soon to be prescribed by the Constitutional Court, of course also the risk of a dramatically broken down economy. In the auto industry, that risk is already a reality. In July 2024, an orders breakdown of minus 29 percent vis-à-vis the previous year was to be written down; in regards E-autos, even a minus 69 percent in comparison with the previous year’s month. 

The Ampel apparently just plans precisely until the election date in September 2025. With you, it is therein clear, even if you deny it, that at the precise point after September 2025 there will be no more money. Any new Finance Minister will need to immediately order a budget embargo. Or then the Ampel or a successor perhaps proclaims yet again an emergency situation, so as to be able to conceal and compensate their own self-made budget emergency yet again by means of an ostensible external catastrophe? That is not academic. The coalition’s speakers in this week have explicitly not denied a new budget emergency on the basis of – cite Habeck – a historical struggle in the Ukraine. Whenever those governing trouble themselves over the pathos of endurance and historical dimensions, it becomes dangerous and expensive for the citizens. 

Yet then Herr Habeck also says what for an Economy Minister is a legendary sentence: The “Budget is not the center of the world”. Indecent numbers are thus to the Economy Minister all the same, – unbelievable! – all the same to him also is presence at this budget debate. 

The Ampel in any case is from the summer of 2025 no longer interested in the entire misery; Germany unfortunately still needs to be interested. In business, delayed bankruptcy is a criminal act; in this government, a common practice. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Jörn König, July 4, 2024, Digital Euro

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/181, pp. 23585-23586. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear savers. 

I affirm that the FDP and the Union have taken over our slogan from the first reading, “Cash is Printed Freedom” – very nice! 

            Enrico Komning (AfD): Excellent! Well done!

Our goal is namely to maintain cash as the only legal means of payment, and bind the introduction of the digital euro to a referendum vote according to Article 20, paragraph 2 of the Basic Law. 

The Union cannot do that; since the AfD is the only party which wants to introduce the popular referendum at the Federal level. The Union is thus restricted in its possibilities and thus “only” demands that the German Bundestag needs to agree to the introduction of a digital euro. More, the Union cannot do. 

The Ampel coalition is still much worse: They want to allow introduction of the digital euro by the ECB without any parliamentary control. 

Currencies – this, the German Currency Union of 1 July 1990 has shown – need to be a matter of the entire people, 

            Enrico Komning (AfD): That is true democracy! 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Of that, you have no idea! 

            Enrico Komning (AfD): Yes, direct democracy!

and plainly not the decision of technocrats. Yet the ECB consists only of technocrats, and presently Germany as the largest nation in the ECB Council does not have a vote. 

            Frank Schäffler (FDP): No, we have a vote!

For many months, no vote; the voting rights rotate every four months. 

In the U.S.A. also the risks are recognized and the central bank by law is forbidden three points, among others: First, to issue a digital dollar without express approval of the Congress; second, to issue the digital dollar direct to an individual person; and third, to give up control over the digital currency policy to unelected technocrats. If indeed our hegemon U.S.A. warns of the surveillance by means of digital currencies, then there must be something to it. 

The digital euro is from our viewpoint a further step in the direction of the virtualization of money – away from the human haptic 

            (The speaker holds up a piece of paper)

to a virtual abstraction. 

Jens Zimmermann (SPD): Yet you think it is not too big! What then is done with 200 euro bills?

Together with the EU-ID, a possible programming ability and a social credit system, some horror visions could become true. 

            Frank Schäffler (FDP): Your friends in China do it!

The authorities could limit where, when and what one may be paid, they could observe any transaction and take note. 

            Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): Nonsense! 

            Armand Zorn (SPD): Simply just nonsense!

The state could connect the account with the CO₂ exhaust and the social credit score. 

            Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): Are you still reciting correctly?

Yet the ultimate horror would be that account could be completely frozen. We do not want all of that, since freedom is the only thing that counts! 

            Jens Zimmermann (SPD): Do the people in the Ukraine also think that?

For all who think that the euro is a success story: The euro since its existence has lost 80 percent of its value. An 80 percent loss of value, that is a catastrophe for the saver. The measurement of value in euros is as absurd 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr König.

as if one wants to measure length with a rubber band. 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Come to an end. 

We are thus in favor of the measurement of value by money with a fixed, defined connection

Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Your speaking time is up.

to natural resources. 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Your speaking time, Herr König, is up.

Many thanks for your attention. 

 

[trans: tem]

Barbara Benkstein, June 28, 2024, Artificial Intelligence

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/179, pp. 23264-23265. 

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Valued colleagues. 

After a good nine months, we here in plenary session again deliberate on the Union motion for a strengthening of Artificial Intelligence as a key technology for Germany. After nine months, it certainly can be expected that a new thought or a new idea will be born. Yet unfortunately, despite a thorough, orderly description of the problem: A zero return in your motion. 

Ladies and gentlemen, what becomes clear here, and what is it actually about? It’s about no more and yet no less than Germany’s role in the AI and data market. So as to bring it to three points: First, start-ups and KMU [Kleine und Mittlere Unternehmen, small and mid-sized business] require free development possibilities without sprawling bureaucratic impediments. Instead is required, second, more innovation and knowledge transfer, and with that, third, a durable business model with scaling perspectives. 

The 2024 Federal Research and Innovation Report, which here yesterday in plenary session was already presented, lays the finger in the wound. In regards the themes of data and AI, the Federal government neglects the necessary computing infrastructure. It does not do to rebuke the without question splendid achievements of German research institutions in the AI area. 

We in Germany have no recognition or knowledge problem when we speak of AI. Yet, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, what is lacking is a secure, stable computing infrastructure so as to train the algorithms of quite promising start-ups and KMU. For that, these so far need to use the services of large hyperscalers, with the real risks that their training data does not remain exclusively with them. The local supercomputers, for instance in Jülich, Garching or Stuttgart, are primarily computers for science which are only at limited disposal for young business customers. 

There continues to be lacking in Germany a securely financed AI infrastructure. The AI-Federal Association LEAM [large European AI models] initiative figures the construction costs of one such at around 300 million euros. The Federal government, which so gladly styles itself as progressive coalition, has so far kept from view this practical stimulus. To name this refusal is the duty of a constructive opposition. 

The coalition, continues to appear to be, ja, of good cheer to decide in the coming weeks in cabinet the draft budget for 2025. For the digital, data and AI policy, the budget is allowed to become a tragedy: Reductions here, eliminations there, minimal investments. How, with that, valued ladies and gentlemen, shall be strengthened Germany’s role in regards the key technology of AI, remains a secret. 

            Otto Fricke (FDP): The AfD wants to expend more money! Always good!

And the once loudly announced digital budget was in the meantime well buried. Or will the government still apply itself, valued Herr colleague Broadcasting Kaiser? 

As was already adhered to last autumn in this place: Your motion, valued colleagues of the Union, aims in the right direction. It nevertheless is lacking in exactitude and consistency. We therefore will abstain. Our offer, after the coming Bundestag election in a coalition of the reasonable to deal with the AI theme with corresponding priority, stands as before.

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, April 23, 2024, Pensions and the FDP

AfD Kompakt, April 23, 2024. 

That the reduction-free pension at 63 was an expensive election gift of the SPD to its – it needs be said, former – core voters is clear. Nevertheless, the problem is presently in abeyance, since alone the age limit is already continually pushed higher; for those born after 1964, to 65 years. What is overlooked by the entirety of these calculations: The focus on the fixed age limit is no longer suitable for today’s real life of employees. 

We of the AfD delegation demand more freedom and self-determination in regards pension entry. And to that pertains: 45 contribution years are enough. Who has collected this should also without a reduction be pensioned, which can but need not be at 63. To that extent, there is nothing “to abolish”. Only one thing is certain. No one should need to work longer than to 67 years. 

Concerning pensions, the FDP has never distinguished itself with especially original proposals which go beyond “we all need to work much longer”. To a pension reform belongs a socio-political concept and a solid financing. For both, the FDP has nothing to offer, which is seen in the fully under-financed “equities pension” [Aktienrente]. What the FDP now contributes to the pension at 63 is just more wind. “12 Point Plan”, that sounds snappy, only the question is: What has the FDP actually done in the last three years?

[trans: tem]

Jörg Urban, April 17, 2024, Inflated Government in Saxony

AfD Kompakt, April 17, 2024. 

Already in the present legislative period, CDU, Greens and SPD have created thousands of new positions, often so as to take care of their own party personnel with lucrative posts. A renewed growth of the ministries we decisively reject. The bureaucracy is not allowed to be ever again inflated. We instead need to deconstruct it.

 

A shrinking population and the digitalization need to have as a consequence a leaner administration. We are of the opinion that the number of ministries also is to be reduced. The Kultus and Science ministries, for example, could be combined.

 

According to the government’s positions development report, alone the State Chancellery of Minister-president Kretschmer has created 296 new positions within the last five years. Similarly highly inflated under the regime of the Greens were the Justice and Environment ministries. There must finally be an end to this self-service mentality.

 

 

[trans: tem]

Peter Boehringer, March 21, 2024, Debt Brake

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/160, pp. 20611-20612. 

Frau President. 

For the umpteenth time the Linke wants to abolish the debt brake, this time disguised as a “reform”. Meant, however, is the cold abolition; Herr Görke was certainly at least honest. Since 2020, we clearly have a great coalition of all old parties for a boundless making of debt. In addition, we know that the tax money will not be sufficient for the government even in 2025. And the SPD’s speaker has confirmed that a great left-green debt coalition thoroughly sympathizes with this “reform”, or with the abolition idea. 

What does the Linke now concretely propose? In the future, a “transition phase” of precisely one year shall increase the possible excess indebtedness, which diametrically contradicts what the Federal Constitutional Court permitted just last November: Very clearly, a setting aside of the debt brake only for the year of a catastrophe itself. Any time exceeding a year was explicitly forbidden by the Federal Constitutional Court. That does not interest the leftist writers of the motion. 

In the motion’s second demand, the single hard guideline of Article 115, namely the structural deficit limit of 0.35 percent of GDP, shall be annulled. That however would be no “reform” of the debt brake, but a material alteration of the Basic Law’s wording, which may not proceed with a simple motion but only with a law to amend the Constitution with a two-thirds majority. The motion is thus also badly written. 

With the third demand, the besides already highly mathematical finding procedure for the debt brake’s business cycle component shall be still further complicated. Who for once takes a rudimentary look at the formulation [Formelwelt], and the arbitrary scope of valuation which will be used for this calculation, knows that a self-indebted government chronically short of money can thereby vastly exceed the permitted limit of indebtedness – even today. The aim of the Linke, to receive still “greater fiscal scope”, as it is in the motion, is thus absurd, since this scope today already is enormous. 

Clearly, the terms in Article 115 of the Basic Law are very spongy. There are therein named arbitrary expectations without clear deduction criteria, free of parameters as a result of unclear entities, certain cyclical norms, gaps in production, estimates of potential and cyclical settlement procedures, all without binding definitions. And the number in the end will determined by technocratic procedures and legal decrees. 

Dear Linke, you should here just simply love the already existing planned economy, instead of wanting to reform it. Precisely that of course already is your vulgarized Keynesian theoretical model of a world. Simply enjoy it as long as you are still permitted to sit here and play with a national economy. 

Many thanks. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Nothing missed there!

 

[trans: tem]

 

Stephan Brandner, February 22, 2024, Corrupt Government

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/154, pp. 19757-19758. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Herr Fechner, that was way past the themes on which you have spoken here. Yet you have made a gift to us of the seven minutes – a very good thing! The people outside there nevertheless need to know: It is all the same what you fill out in your order of business, you in any case do not restrain yourself when it is at the expense of the AfD. Therefore: Considerable hypocrisy, I need say to you! 

Johannes Fechner (SPD): Why then do you continually lose? Why do you continually lose before the Constitutional Court? 

As to the matter itself, – you have regrettably missed the theme; to the back of the class, Herr Fechner! – it is about old parties, crony business, nepotism, family gangs. We have already been acquainted in this legislative period with the Graichen clan in a Green ministry. Suddenly, a scandal in the FDP Transportation Ministry: There, a section leader for hydrogen has provided his relations and acquaintances with millions; 

            Tina Rudolph (SPD): Greetings to Azerbaijian!

hence, a quick stop of hydrogen projects at the Transportation Ministry. 

All of this is however no exception, ladies and gentlemen. We have the Porsche-mails, of which Herr Wissing apparently also has not heard. We have Herr Lindner and the BB Bank. All of which is very dubious. We have the Kahrs connections through which colleague Kahrs has supplied his Sozikumpel in Hamburg. We do not exactly know what’s with the Benko clan and the Federal government. We have Löbel, Tandler, Sauter, Nüsslein, CDU and CSU captains 

            Ruppert Stüwe (SPD): Yet you are the delegation with the most criminals!

all up to the collar in a corruption and donations swamp. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): So, now on the code of conduct! On the theme!

And you present yourself here in all seriousness and act as if you want to change anything for the better! 

Ladies and gentlemen out there, you must know, regardless whether mask deals, Habeck clans, Benko, Gabriel, Lindner, Tandler, Löbel, or how they all are called, thus regardless whether SPD, FDP, Greens, CDU or CSU, 

            Tina Rudolph (SPD): Nicely excluding your own corruption scandals!

all of you – and this I say ever again from here – have looted the state, without limit. You know no boundaries so as to fill your pockets at the expense of the taxpayers out there. Your daily allowances should be enough. You have not been appointed for lobbying. Despite this, you do not trouble yourselves with what is going through the people’s minds out there, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Frauke Heiligenstadt (SPD): That is unparliamentary!

Apropos lobby contacts: Is Frau Agnes Strack-Rheinmetall here? 

            Ingo Bodtke (FDP): That is an impudence!

She likely continues to lobby. 

You cannot and do not want to halt the lobbying because all of you profit therefrom. Thus the lobby register law is nothing but a dead bird. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): “Dead bird”! There you have long reflected!

It contains no legislative, no executive footprint, as we want, so can be verified: Where has someone somehow exercised an influence on legislation? That, all of you do not want. Representatives of interests can decline the statements on their financing. Lobbyists need not reveal for which projects and statutory purposes they are working. There are so many exceptions that the exceptions are the rule, ladies and gentlemen. 

Today, it is only about minimal alterations. You thereby want to trim that you simply slept through the original legislative process. 

            Anke Henning (SPD): How can one talk so much rubbish?

You have headlong brought into this parliament a few hours before the final vote motions to amend which you yourselves do not understand. We therefore here today need to speak in plenary session on redactive alterations. 

Johannes Fechner (SPD): That is just idiocy! Dumb thing! We do nothing in the lobby register! Nothing is changed in the lobby register!

We could have spared ourselves all of this. Had you done reasonable legislative work, as we will do it when we shortly are in the government, we would have been able to completely spare ourselves this debate point. 

Johannes Fechner (SPD): You certainly have not read it, Herr Brandner! You do not grasp the simplest points! 

Tina Rudolph (SPD): We can spare ourselves this entire democracy if you are in the government!

You have once again exposed yourselves. It is good that this could again be expressed here; I know not how long that still goes. 

Many thanks. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Ja, tschüs! 

 

[trans: tem]

Joachim Kuhs, February 27, 2024, EU Finance and Ukraine War

European Parliament, Strasbourg, P9 CRE-PROV (2024)02-27(2-025-0000). 

Herr President, esteemed Commissioner Han, valued colleagues, Herr State Secretary. 

Even this laboriously negotiated and stripped down revision of the seven year financial framework will fail. Whereon do I fix this? Now, if Herr Orban needs be sent to drink coffee so that all negotiation leaders thus agree, then everyone recognizes: Here, something is not in order. Is this a rotten compromise? 

When in the second round, two-thirds of the 50 billion euros for the Ukraine facility is financed by debt, and it is supposed this would not burden the EU budget, then, valued colleagues, one is self-deceived. Do you really believe that the Ukraine following this frightful war will be in a position to service the interest payments, to say nothing of the paying back the principal debt? 

When a third of 21 billion euros is scraped together from all sides and new gaps are thereby everywhere opened up, then every Schwabisch Hausfrau knows: That can only cause discord and irritation. 

Yet what most depresses me personally, and this I’ve said already in committee: Have you, honored colleagues, even once asked the people in the Ukraine what they really want? Do they really want more money? That, I do not believe. These people want peace for their country. If we here in plenary session – just recently, Herr Gahler, you said it – continue to promote the war with weapons deliveries, and not work towards peace, then we thus make ourselves culpable for the people in the Ukraine, and also for the soldiers, who daily die or are crippled by the hundreds. Dear colleagues, let us finally stop this war! 

 

[trans: tem]

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, February 1, 2024, Scholz Government and Pensions

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/151, pp. 19276-19277. 

Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honored citizens. 

Germany is being passed down [Deutschland wird nach unten durchgereicht]: The economy shrinks, the bankruptcy wave rolls, and achievers in droves leave the country. The infrastructure collapses, the healthcare system is exhausted – to say nothing of the education system. 

That is the balance of a government which, quite alone, wants to save the world and the climate, and, for that and quite without necessity, destroys the foundations of existence of an industrial nation, which pumps billions into Bürgergeld, yet leaves nothing over for the employees, which sinks untold sums for ideological nonsense and, for that, is ready to squeeze the people to the last cent. 

How can that be? “Champagne for all!”, that was the Ampel’s deal: Children’s basic security for the SPD, climate fuss for the Greens, and “no tax increases” for the FDP. It could have been so nice. Instead, last year came the reckoning: Everything which the Ampel, it needs be said, has tricked together – none of it was constitutional. And even the budget, of which we here today speak, stands on shaky footing. 

Now, at the latest, it would be to announce a change of course, to say nothing of saving. Saving: That means – for those who do not know – to spend less money there where it need not be, so as to have it where it will be needed. 

            Takis Mehmet Ali (SPD): Yes, where then?

You unfortunately do the opposite. You raise the taxes on CO₂ and benzine, you raise the trucking fee, and you raise the taxes for the restaurant trade. 

            Takis Mehmet Ali (SPD): Yet you just said we should save!

You take the farmers hostage and beyond that demand still higher taxes for meat. Then it is only for the rich. What a glorious idea! 

And what you promised as a relief for the citizens – construction help, heating help, climate money – that slips away. There never was the money for that. 

Yet – und das ist gut so – the citizens begin to understand. The money is certainly not gone, it is just elsewhere. Suddenly, there is talk in the streets of bike paths in Peru, of gender projects in Colombia, of development aid for China. We pay for the pensions for other EU countries – countries in which the per capita assets are far above ours. 

Before all, however, we pay untold sums for a failed energy transition which massively overcharges the budget and our social accounts, and which will burden us for generations. 

Perhaps look for once at the studies from Holland and Denmark, or at least what Herr Raffelhüschen has written. 

            Claudia Raffelhüschen (FDP): Oah!

The results are unequivocal: The costs of migration are ruining our social state. What follows from that is clear: Still more rapidly rising contributions for pensions, health and care – and still fewer benefits for those who are to provide for all of this with their work. That is the new reality in Germany: As it happens, for those who finance the whole thing with their tax money, there remains scarcely anything. This is unique in Europe. 

            Martin Rosemann (SPD): All dumb stuff!

This is the reason why in Germany no normal earner can still afford a house, or in old age, the  care home. 

You can, Minister Heil, still so often emphasize, “Work makes the difference” – the people know better. That ultimately is also an origin of the rising costs in Bürgergeld. 

It is directly therefore an original sin that the Ampel in its greed wants to further avail itself of the employees’ money. 

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): That is just nonsense, what you are telling here!

With threadbare reasoning, you already had the finger in the till of the Federal Agency for Labor. That, after the last hearing, Gott sei dank, you have no longer dared – not nearly from insight, but alone out of fear of the next constitutional slap. 

Instead, you continue to plunder the statutory pensions, those additional allowances guaranteed by statute which you cut without further ado up to 2027 by a total of around 6.8 billion euros. 

For your next great project, the equities pension [Akteinrente], in which you are so proud, here are a couple of numbers: When, for that, you borrow 12 billion euros as a one-time credit and stick it in a fund, when do you think you would you at least restore the eliminated 6.8 billion euros? In the year 2050. And when you each year borrow 12 billion on credit and continually deposit it in a fund, the 6.8 billion is in back there until the year 2032 – besides the payments of up to 108 billion. 

Unfortunately, that does not at all help the Pension Insurance; since the sustainability reserve will be exhausted by 2026 as a result of your present cutbacks. Yet what do numbers matter when the government now needs money? And that shows what employees and pensioners are worth to the government. 

This development is dangerous. 

When the people no longer have the feeling that their work pays, when they no longer have the feeling that the government keeps its promises, then you lay the axe to the foundation of our society. Therefore I say today: Learn from the disaster which you have let loose with false incentives for the Bürgergeld, do not abuse the citizens’ income and assets for your wrong way, and turn back to the ground of reality! 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Stephan Brandner, February 2, 2024, Budget

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/152, pp. 19424-19425. 

Frau President. 

Dear joyous, liberal, straightforward, Deutschland-loving friends of the Alternative für Deutschland! Dear German democratic old delegation and ultra-left remainder, standing for the opposite. The budget debate draws to an end, and it is for me to find a few solemn words, and which are found. 

Four days of budget debate, four days of constant propaganda destruction [Dauerwerbeschleife] for the Alternative für Deutschland: Not one speech without the mention of my party. 

On the one side, the CDU/CSU delegation’s bugging us and our positions; that was partially an advertisement for us. On the other side, denigration, tirades of hate and incitement, Orwellian excess on the part of the blinded, light brown blend and those still further left. Many thanks for that! 

I believe anyone who still was not persuaded by the AfD, has been – following this budget debate and, before all, following the speeches of Michael Espendiller, ladies and gentlemen. 

You were right: Never again! Never again unity party, never again unity delegations, never again unity media, never again socialism, never again state demonstrations! Before all, never again socialism, not red, not brown and not green. Yet also no state bankruptcy, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Jamila Schäefer (Greens): Never again fascism!

This state bankruptcy is touching near. We do not say that, the so-called Economy Minister Habeck and the Eastern Commissioner say that: “We have…no more money”. 

Ladies and gentlemen, two years Ampel, two years of a FDP Finance Minister, two years of Quartetto Infernale – one can also speak of a gang of four on the government bench: Habeck, Scholz, Lindner and Baerbock. They have ruined our country. They have shamed our country. In two years, you have flattened one of the greatest economies on this Earth; that might be historically unique. No more money! Yet still money, for example, for a Federal Presidential Schloss Bellevue which for a loss of 500 million euros shall be renovated. Granted to the Federal President is even 200 million euros for a transition. How many dwellings could be built for that, ladies and gentlemen? Consider: A Federal President who labels millions of people out there as rats! All who are not of his opinion, are rats. 

I call upon you, dear Herr Steinmaier, reconsider that! Rats, which must finance your building excesses, ultimately finance a rat hole. 

Many thanks, ladies and gentlemen.

             Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is an insolence! Pfui Teufel!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Espendiller, January 31, 2024, Foreign Office

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/150, pp. 19170-19171. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube. And, of course, dear Frau Baerbock. 

One of my favorite headlines of last week was: “Russian Campaign Uncovered”. The Foreign Office shall have undertaken a data analysis which of course is totally trustworthy, yet quite incidentally is put forward in Spiegel. 

This data analysis comes to the conclusion that on X thousands of German language tweets were removed which include the accusation that the Federal government neglects its own people so as to support the Ukraine. O mein Gott! How has it come to this? One is, ja, completely shocked. Or yet: One is informed. 

One need only read the Finance Ministry’s report of December 2023 in which is found that, since the war’s beginning, Germany has arranged a total expenditure in the sum of 27.8 billion euros for the benefit of the Ukraine. This number does not at all include the German contribution for the EU program. Thus, 27.8 billion euros: That is nearly the 2024 budget for the Foreign Office, the Family Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry reckoned together. Yet for this Ampel of horrors, this presumably is all just peanuts. Electricity comes out of the socket, money grows on trees and stylists are paid by the taxpayers. 

Apropos taxpayers: While we here in this country burden our citizens’ income with tax rates between 14 and 45 percent, there is in the Ukraine a slim flat income tax of 18 percent, plus a 1.5 percent war tax. That means, the average Ukrainian oligarch pays less tax as a percentage than most of the normal employees in Germany. Presumably, the Christmas ski season in the Ukraine thus again runs recht gut. 

            Deborah Düring (Greens): You should be ashamed! This is unbelievable!

To the enjoyment of these pleasures come of course only those able to afford it and, in wondrous ways, are not with their countrymen at the front, 

            Vice-president Petra Pau: Herr member?

at the front, where entire generations of Ukrainians are sent to death by their President, instead of finally starting armistice negotiations. 

            Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): Kremlin propaganda! 

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): Shame on you!

Vice-president Petra Pau: Herr member – I have stopped the clock – do you accept a question or remark from member Farle? 

No, thanks. 

And this naturally interests the Ampel not at all. 

In Germany meanwhile flutter into the mail boxes the utility bills for renters, which demand in part additional payments in the four-figure range. It is estimated that an average 581 euros has been the additional payment per renter. Price driver number one: The energy costs. 

The government’s tellers of fairy tales will now again object that Putin is guilty for the high energy prices. That however is not the truth. Since it is the foreign policy and the energy policy of the Ampel and its black-red predecessor government which have gotten us into trouble. 

Besides, no one yet has been able to explain to me why it is now so much better to be dependent on American LNG instead of Russian gas. It certainly cannot be the fault of Putin's evil Politik; otherwise, the government might also make no energy deals with the United Arab Emirates. I do not know whether you have heard, but women’s rights do not look so good there. 

Deborah Düring (Greens): Since when are you interested in women’s rights? This is just a farce! 

           Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): An AfDer mouths the words “women’s rights”!

Yet to the Federal government it is quite obviously all the same – just so as the human rights of the Israelis who are routinely rocketed by their Hamas neighbors and cut down with the utmost barbarity. For years, the Federal government nevertheless supports the so-called Palestinian aid work of UNWRA with contributions in the millions. 

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Have pity! Mercy!

And for ever has there been evidence that this organization supports the Hamas terrorists. 

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): You are the Kremlin’s useful idiots!

On X on Sunday, we were allowed to learn that twelve members had participated in the Hamas surprise attack on October 7 of last year. And for precisely these long since known reasons, my delegation for years ever and ever again demanded to stop the payments to UNRWA and to completely dissolve UNRWA. 

Yet ever again the same thing happened: When the great media wave of indignation rolled, the payments were frozen for effect in the media, only so as to again be furtively undertaken a brief time later. And thus this Federal government not only supports terrorists and murderers, but furthermore, for example, the traffickers in the Mediterranean. And here besides we have moved for the elimination of the means. 

While we are on eliminations: We have also moved that the means for the political foundations in the Foreign Office budget of around 84 million euros be cut. With this money, all of the old parties manage a kind of network of their own embassies. Look, for example, at the website of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. There are worldwide locations; for example, in Manila, Islamabad, Lima, Harari and Tiflis. And so it is in regards all the foundations of the old parties – except of course in regards the AfD. 

Yet the question actually is: Need the German taxpayer pay for that? Our answer to that is quite clear: Nein, he need not. In that we put this question in regards all positions of Frau Baerbock’s budget, we could identify a savings potential of a total sum of 1.4 billion euros. We thereby require 21.5 percent less money than this Ampel of horrors. And quite honestly, I think, there is still more. 

Many thanks for your attention. 

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Dank sei Gott!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Jörn König, November 17, 2023, Cum-Ex Tax Fraud and Olaf Scholz

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/138, pp. 17617-17618. 

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear citizens. 

Olaf Scholz, our patron saint of every purposed lapse of memory, is indeed the chancellor with the tightest scandal entanglement in the history of the Federal Republic. We recall: There was once a firm, Wirecard, in Finance Minister Scholz’s area of responsibility – a gigantic scandal due to a lack of financial oversight. At the BaFin [Federal Finance Office], the chief and vice-chief needed to go. Its state secretary however remains untouched. In the good, old times of the Bonn Republic on the other hand, ministers resigned on account of shopping tokens. 

Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Yet nothing new occurs to you! The speech you have already made here a couple of times!

Yet one scandal alone is not sufficient for Olaf Scholz. He still has, ja, Cum-Ex and lately a breach of the constitution in reserve. 

            Matthais Hauer (CDU/CSU): And G 20!

With Cum-Ex, taxes could be saved, and this doubled and multiplied. On the whole arose a damage of almost 36 billion euros for the German people. That was in fact illegal, yet it functioned for years. 

As Cum-Ex finally went up in smoke, what did Olaf Scholz as First Bürgermeister do? Instead of rendering a report, he met with one of those responsible for the illegal deals, Herr Olearius of the Warburg Bank, and he has evidently lied about that. Following this meeting, Hamburg’s finance administration then decided in November 2016, in the face of the legal situation, not to demand 46 million euros in taxes back from the Warburg Bank. 

Chronologically, it went further. One year later, a Finance Minster, namely of the Union, Wolfgang Schäuble, took care that the city of Hamburg not again renounce the 46 million euros. 

Frauke Heiligenstadt (SPD): That’s all old hat! There’s nothing there. On the contrary!

The leader of Hamburg’s tax office at that time was sent into early retirement, after Olaf Scholz became Finance Minister in Berlin. 

            Michael Schrodi (SPD): The AfD’s lies are long since overhauled! 

            Matthais Hauer (CDU/CSU): The SPD becomes quite nervous! 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): The truth hurts!

At the end of 2020, the bank finally paid back to the fiscal authority the demanded millions from the Cum-Ex business, plus interest. The Hamburg SPD is deeply entangled. Alone in 2017, at least four donations of the Warburg Bank or subsidiaries to the Hamburg SPD. Later, 215,000 euros in cash were found in a safe deposit of SPD comrade Johannes Kahrs. Nothing has to do with nothing. 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): That’s the facts!

Since October 2020, an investigative committee finally pursues the Cum-Ex affair, first in Hamburg, then in Berlin. The state attorneys investigate many persons on account of suspicion of favoritism. In that regard in April 2021, the investigators noticed that there were e-mails which include for consideration effacements of data. There is the suspicion that in Olaf Scholz’s calendar from his time as Hamburg Bürgermeister information is lacking or was even effaced. 

The former member of the Bundestag Fabio De Masi could even later in August 2023 demonstrate that. 

In April 2023 the Union in the Bundestag, thus here, moved for a parliamentary investigating committee. A vote in plenary session was prevented by quite shabby procedural tricks. 

            Frauke Heiligenstadt (SPD): Ja?

Since probably the required 25 percent was quite surely present. 

Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): The only ones who here always seek to                         trick are you! Only, it doesn’t work out for you!

In July 2023, the lead state attorney in Cologne, Joachim Roth, placed himself in quasi retirement so as to forestall a dismissal. Were the investigations somehow too good? Four months later, in November 2023, this man is suddenly dead. 

            Jens Zimmermann (SPD): Ey, Leute!

In any case, in November 2023, laptops learn to run. Steffan Jänke, the SPD’s chief investigator, was submitted to the security testing of Hamburg’s Constitution Defense. He was nevertheless made chief investigator by the Hamburg SPD. This man takes into possession evidence laptops and presumably makes evidence on the side; notably from a safe. 

Frauke Heiligenstadt (SPD): He does not take into his possession! He is straightforward and impressively qualified!

To say it in the exactly suitable words of Olaf Scholz of a year ago in this place – he himself will have already again forgotten these words: Who believes that Olaf Scholz has nothing to do with all of this, he also believes in talking white rabbits. Welcome to Alice in Wonderland! Welcome to the Wonderland of the SPD where reality stands on its head! 

Herr Scholz, what will your legacy be? You lead a coalition of breach of the constitution, you demonstrably lie, you are involved in illegal machinations, and you have lost the trust of the citizens. Resign! Lord God, what needs to happen so that you finally take responsibility? 

            Norbert Kleinwächter (AfD): Herr Scholz is set in concrete in his                                         Chancellor’s chair! 

 

[trans: tem]

Peter Boehringer, November 28, 2023, Budget Crisis

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/139, pp. 17659-17660. 

Frau President. 

We experience historic weeks. Years of law-breaking and false decisions culminate in a budget crisis behind which is hid a crisis of government and also one of reason. The Chancellor’s conclusions from a compelling decision of the Constitutional Court are deviant and illogical. The government cannot in 2023 retroactively assert the continuation of an uncontrollable emergency situation which in 2022 itself had declared to be ended. That doesn’t go.   

It might have been strained as to whether this time it would be based on an energy emergency, or a foreign war, or a newly inflamed Corona rage, or the immediately impending over-heating of the Earth, – we have heard even that from Herr Kindler – or like a storm flood of the previous week in Schleswig-Holstein, it needed to be held out as an emergency basis for 2024. Yesterday evening came the solution: The war of February 2022 and even the Ahrtal flood of 2021 are the culprits for the emergency of 2023. All of this you discover directly after the decision and quite suddenly in November 2023, retroactive to January. At which embarrassing level should we here still be deceived? 

To expect a vote in favor of this reasoning in the Bundestag will similarly be the next breach of the constitution. Neither in 2023 nor 2024 arises an emergency situation in the sense of Article 115 of the Basic Law. One breach of the constitution is not healed by another, Herr Chancellor. And your demonstrative exit from the hall at this sentence in my speech therein alters nothing at all. 

You decided on, – you still adhere to it – in one of your first acts in office as Chancellor together with the new Finance Minister Lindner, the absurd 2021 supplementary budget in January 2022 and therein also the quite clearly unconstitutional accounting system. The special funds’ illegal credits of many billions should be the cash box for the implementation of the red-green goals altering society. The entire policy of the CO₂ hysteria energy guidelines, the mass immigration, the woke transformation of society, the hostility to industry, the Corona lockdowns costing billions, and gifts of weapons to foreign countries, would not have been thinkable without this money. 

Unfortunately, the Constitutional Court has withdrawn from you the financial operations basis just now, dozens of billions too late. For four years already, Germany is governed by financial emergency. There is a whiff of Weimar; from 1930, there was emergency government, mostly supported by emergency decrees. Since 2020, by the Groko and by the Ampel were generally declared “emergency situations”. In this way is the debt brake shredded, the Basic Law circumvented – the people need to know this! 

The Greens chief Ricarda Lang even demands the permanent suspension of the constitutional debt brake. Herr Mützenich has also plainly more than implied it. It is desired to declare a permanent emergency. “We will also need to discuss the suspension for next year, that is a debate which now…is next”, said Frau Lang. The Ampel stands before political, moral and financial bankruptcy. 

The country can be governed according to the constitution only with a fundamental change of course. The self-named democratic middle – the oh so democratic middle! – has with at least three budgets governed beyond the constitution. And the SPD delegation chief here in this place has a few minutes ago designated the Basic Law as a monstrance, as an embarrassing relic! Shame on you, Herr Mützenich! Where is the Constitution Defense when it is needed? Where is it? These are attacks on the free democratic basic order, here from this podium! 

One cannot be permanently pressured by a crisis. The decades-long, lies-of-a-lifetime policy of all the old parties cannot be compensated by debts and tax money. I here in this place in the Bundestag said exactly so at the proclamation of the first emergency situation in March 2020. It still does not go. 

Herr Scholz, from the beginning, your uncovered, deliberately illegal checks have even worsened the German misery. Had this money not been expended, Germany today would be not only financially but generally better, because then a mass of social-political nonsense would not have been able to be financed. And all of you have participated since the Kohl’schen checkbook times! 

The AfD is ready to clear away this debris, yet only when you put away the false decisions and make free the way for a new beginning, for finally a once more rational-, national-led  government. Then, despite the horrendous damages resulting from eight years of borders given up and billions of interest-bearing indebtedness which will burden the budget until 2070, 

            Vice-president Yvonne Magwas: Please come to a conclusion.

exists the opportunity for a rescue of Germany. – My last sentence. – Yet initially required is your exit as a purifying catharsis which, yes as in classical tragedy, is the prerequisite for a healing. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Albrecht Glaser, November 10, 2023, Global Minimum Tax

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/135, p. 17103. 

Hearty thanks, Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The progressive coalition discovers a new tax and the CDU naturally joins in. It is to be granted – and therefore also praised – that after lengthy negotiations an agreement has been reached, and also an international law treaty is tucked behind. To the extent one now tries to lead the work to an end. The new tax law has over a hundred paragraphs and a complexity which is as high as our presently existing income tax law. There is however one other thing which stands beside. The experts see it also. The talk is of the greatest tax project in decades. It is for the representatives of German industry and trades a fully new tax law. A citation from the hearings: The tax consulting profession speaks of a “lack of embedding in the German tax system” and of legal insecurities resulting therefrom.   

Besides a minimum tax declaration at the local finance office and a minimum tax report at the Federal Central Office for Taxes, the affected businesses need to develop and operate their own controlling system so as to account for, control and evaluate the tax burdens and effective taxes of all domestic and foreign subsidiaries on the basis of local accounting guidelines, the international IFRS [International Financial Reporting Standards] regulations and the respective national tax guidelines. Moreover, the goal of a higher tax intake – which is now relativized; it was however always a quite important goal – is not achieved. 

            Deborah Düring (Greens): It is certainly not about a higher tax intake!

For that, there is a study of the ifo Institute which demonstrates that nothing in that regard is forthcoming. It is therefore shifted to the aspect of an improvement of competitiveness. 

The bureaucracy in Germany further increases, despite affirmations otherwise by the entire great coalition in this house. Between July 2021 and 2022, the current bureaucracy expenditure was increased by means of a new law from 6.7 billion euros to a total 17.4 billion euros; ergo, around 11 billion euros, as stated by the national norms control council; that is thus not some number from some journalist. The FDP member Herbrand expressly complained of this phenomenon in a guest contribution in the Wirtschafts Woche in these days where he speaks of a fulfillment expenditure of 44 billion euros which still needs to be added to this latest engrossment of bureaucracy.   

            Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP): He is right!

The initiative for a worldwide minimum tax proceeds from the OECD, a union of 38 developed countries which feel themselves obligated to the market economy. There emerges the question whether the U.S.A. or China – this has been indicated, it is much more dramatic than was indicated – thus seriously introduces the minimum tax, as would have gladly Germany the model boy or the EU. 

            Maximilian Mordhorst (FDP): That is the look in the crystal ball!

Add to this that some states even today are considering defensive measures. Thus the Americans will make tax credits. These tax credits will not lead to that they will be accounted for the minimum tax, but that is a trick so as to relativize the effects in a petty cash fund. It will come, as at the Paris climate agreement, to where only Europeans are obligated to something; others however wait awhile, and think of optimizing their individual national interests. 

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, you are today driving this country against the wall; there, holiday speeches are of little use. If we do not solve the problems of the high taxation of businesses at over 30 percent, of bearable energy costs, the education failures in primary schools to the creation of hazelnut subjects in the universities, the fading work ethic and the lack of identification with the German virtues, a sustained improvement of the situation in Germany will not enter into it. It requires a change of times, ladies and gentlemen, but a right one. 

Hearty thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]