Tino Chrupalla, March 18, 2025, Democracy and Debt

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27752-27754. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen. 

It is now three months since Chancellor Scholz put the confidence question. The starting point was the debts policy in which the Ampel coalition fell apart. The citizens were on one side assured that there can be no further so, on the other side were political processes paralyzed. To the 20^th German Bundestag, this one here, was denied that it still can reach decisions of significance; since there should be new elections and first of all the new parliament and the new Federal government should bear the responsibility for Germany’s future. All who wish to recall, know how many motions were referred back to the committees by the Praesidium. Nothing should be possible. 

The vote on the migration crisis offered an intermezzo. Here, the CDU/CSU, somewhat disconnected, sought to draw to its side the leading theme of the Bundestag election. In the result, Friedrich Merz anxiously retreated and vowed an improvement; since “Firewall Merz” assured: With the Alternative für Deutschland can no one cooperate. 

And then came the great quake of the February 23 Bundestag election. Now was clear: The majorities were quite clearly shifted, and suddenly everything was different. The outgoing Bundestag was to be made use of so as to reinforce the future Federal government, and indeed because only you have the majorities here – even though today the majority of the newly elected members is here, and today an organizing sitting would have been able to take place. The fearful Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz stands now at mid-point. Where is actually – and the question needs be allowed – Olaf Scholz? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): He sits there!

This one of course still conducts as per the Basic Law the official business. Ladies and gentlemen, what a drama you require of the citizens and our voters! 

The highest good of politicians, valued colleagues, if credibility. With these embarrassing actions, valued Herr Merz, you have completely lost yours. The voters feel themselves defrauded by you, and that rightly. Are you actually sure that you will ever become Chancellor? Since that is your sole objective. You therefore bargain with the holders of the old majorities. For you, it is certainly not about the future of Germany. For you, it’s about your Chancellorship. And for you every means is proper so as to not become the next failed Chancellor candidate of your party. 

That you have no backbone, Herr Merz, we felt in the election campaign, and we all know that. But that you in the meantime are completely invertebrate, you will here prove with this vote. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Like a North Sea crab!

You play politics and promise everyone almost anything, and that seemingly appears to be simple: When 50 billion does not suffice, it is simply 100 billion euros which you place at the disposal of the failed governing party, the Greens. The problem nevertheless is: You finance your power option to be Chancellor by means of debts at the cost of future generations, at the cost of our children and grandchildren, and then in the end perhaps send them to war. “Special funds” you name this new kind of state indebtedness. It is amusing that during the election campaign Chancellor Scholz named this exactly so in a political talk show. Now he moreover does what he can do best: 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Simply nothing!

He is silent, and simply lets everything thus happen. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Has forgotten who is Chancellor!

The instrument of an inflationary special fund is abused so as to force through targeted investments. It would thus be important to ascertain the precise need so that this money does not simply come to nothing, or is lost through expensive consultant contracts. 

The positions in the Federal ministries continually grow for years. Yet no Federal minister appears to have found in the past decades the right people who understand their subject. On the one side to speak of de-bureaucratization, on the other to massively build up exactly that: Whom does that serve other than officials and the parties who are behind it? Why is the Federal Chancellor’s Office enlarged, and why after the Bundestag elections will be quickly created attractive posts for former political co-workers and fellow travelers? That, Frau Paus here could briefly explain. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Where is Frau Paus?

The theme of credibility I already mentioned. 

You make of the state a by-word for plunder. And that is the real emergency situation in this country. And do you really think to thereby still have the backing of the citizens? In your parallel world, scarcely anyone still errs. No longer does one understand for whom you actually do politics – that really harms the democracy, Frau Haßelmann. All in fact may count yourselves fortunate that we of the Alternative für Deutschland as political competitors have taken trouble for a fabulously high election participation. 

Let us look for once at the problem child of national defense. Can this by the present Bundeswehr actually still be secured? Of course it cannot. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Yet you don’t want that!

The principal cause is the Bundeswehr’s current build-up itself. For example, the surplus bureaucratization in procurement procedures. Encampments were closed, the venues sold, depots closed, material sold or donated to foreign countries. In which places do you then want to begin to invest? 

To secure the votes of proponents, you conduct the immediate re-introduction of the defense duty [Wehrpflicht] in the field. The CSU even wants to implement this by year’s end. In which district recruiting offices, which no longer exist, do you actually want to muster the soldiers? 

You see valued colleagues, this important theme for Germany will be made for a still not Chancellor Merz a sticking point for his majorities. 

With Donald Trump, you all now suddenly think the sole foreign partner has been lost. Tja, plainly one should not be so one-sidedly oriented, Herr Merz. Now of course will be painfully led before your eyes that the Americans now place in the foreground their own interests – what a surprise! And I ask you: What then actually are our interests? How shall the German and European security be guaranteed? Where then remains the European security architecture? Why do you never speak of your perspective of a peaceful Europe from a German viewpoint? You think now you can call upon the Ukraine war as a legitimization for a new partition of the European continent. Yet we need no new friend-foe imagery, as you today have briefly sketched it, Herr Merz. And a so-called war capability [Kriegstüchtigkeit] we also do not need. It belongs to another epoch. We need long-lasting peace on the entire continent of Europe. This signal must go into the world. The old continent must find and negotiate its interests, and stand united behind them. And thereby may Germany play a decisive role.   

The world looks on perplexed for quite a while at the German drift [Treiben]. This helpless stumbling must finally have an end. No one trusts a country which does not trust itself, and develops no plan for the future; this applies to the citizens even so as to foreign partners and our own economy. 

The core brands of German industry were incorporated in the automobile industry – as were the skilled trades and the Mittelstand. For that, we were known and esteemed throughout the world. The latest news of elimination of positions at Audi and VW, of the emigrations and insolvencies, are presently of little encouragement. To get underway, you now want massive infrastructure projects. Again the question: Which then and where? What are your priorities, and which firms will actually counter-finance [gegenfinanzieren] this by means of taxes and duties, by the creation of workplaces and training places? 

Ladies and gentlemen, here, without a plan, the state debt shall be driven to heaven. I can again only imagine the subvention package with which you want to attract business with expensive tax money. That, we all already know – Herr Habeck – from the past: 600 million euros for Northvolt in Schleswig-Holstein, 10 billion euros for Intel. It is, ja, also easier to always print more money than to examine the finances in a business-like way. Since one thing for years has simply not been touched: We really need an honest audit. And had the CDU still a profile, a DNA, as Herr Merz always nicely says, it would pursue that. Your former Finance Minster Worlfgang Schäuble stood for investing only that money which was covered by the state budget. And for what do you stand, Herr Merz? You have meanwhile let yourself be implanted with the SPD’s mRNA. 

We have a tax income at record heights. And with that do not come out right. Why actually not? You want to sell to the German taxpayer your un-economy as an “investment plan”. Yet special funds are and remain special debts, to which we even so little agree as every businessman who with such a behavior would give himself over directly into insolvency. 

I give you a short accounting example: One trillion euros of debts which you today want to issue,  special debts with a present interest rate of 2.9 percent, means in ten years 100 billion euros of interest. 100 billion euros of interest! 

And it’s interesting how important for you this time the science is. Are the economists and business experts less qualified than the vaccination doctors of the Corona time? 

What’s with the climate neutrality? This strategic goal I might and must not evaluate. Yet you want to write it into the Basic Law, and have it implemented until 2045. So presumptuous is not even the EU. And that is saying something. Herr Söder besides thinks it is no state goal, even if it is anchored in the Basic Law. And that is an interesting reading of the Basic Law. 

Valued colleagues, you’ve now finally overstrained the bow. You make yourselves and this parliament ultimately unworthy of belief, and that, we will not let stand. The CDU’s few voters in my constituency of Görlitz now well ask me: Herr Chrupalla, when actually are the new elections? 

I appeal to all colleagues, especially of the CSU/CSU delegation – many of you are directly elected, have contacts with the citizens, businessmen, associations: Follow your experiences and the freedom of your mandate. Vote against this draft law and thereby for our Basic Law and for Germany! 

Many thanks.

[trans: tem]

Peter Boehringer, March 13, 2025, Debt Brake and War Budget

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/213, pp. 27710-27711. 

Frau President. 

“I would find it…most highly problematic if the 20^th German Bundestag, which has an almost completely lost democratic legitimacy,…reached in its last days such fundamental decisions.” 

These are not my words, but of colleague Frei of the CDU, not of today – today, he said something different – but of a good ten days ago. That is approximately the shelf-life of CDU promises. 

We thus today as the 20^th German Bundestag are then still allowed to act only if, fully surprising, an existential and unavoidable decision for our nation is pending. Which however is not so. This morning here already could the 21^st Bundestag sit. It is simply anti-democratic that Herrn Merz and Klingbeil, disregarding the 21^st Bundestag, want to have the Basic Law changed with majorities of the old, outgoing Bundestag.   

We speak today of hundreds of billions of euros of special debts. We speak even of the long-term undermining of the regular order of a unified Federal budget with a clear debts upper limit. Over one trillion euros as additional state debt shall be taken up. Upon every net taxpayer shall be inflicted debts calculated at more than 60,000 euros if these amounts are issued, which will only last a few years – perhaps pretty much like this coalition’s time in office. 

Debts are, despite the propaganda, never investments in a good future and also never, Frau Dröge, in the state interest. On the contrary: The interest and thus tax burden take design options from future generations. Naturally the debts intoxication leads to high inflation under which primarily the little man suffers. You devour in advance one trillion euros for which others need later starve. In this regard, the recognition of the debt brake is even in the Union’s election program: 

            “We adhere to the debt brake…Today’s debts are tomorrow’s tax increases.” 

And Herr Merz said in the election campaign: 

“The debt brake defends…the tax payments of the young generation. Shall we today expend their money? We take in 1,000 billion euros in taxes…and with that we should make do.” 

Herr Merz, you commit, even before entry into office, the quickest and greatest election fraud in German history. Nothing, simply nothing in today’s situation is surprising. The problems exist for decades. Supposedly, the money will now be expended exclusively and rapidly for infrastructure and the Bundeswehr. Investments in these areas under black-red chancellors in the last 35 years – the fat years – were never sufficiently undertaken; otherwise, there would not generally be giant, structural deficits: Who should believe that this time, for the first time, it will be different? 

In addition, the 2022 100 billion euros of special debts were in part mis-appropriated [zweckfremdet] for the Ukraine. Mis-appropriation now also threatens with the new regulation whereby such defense expenditures may be under taken without regard to the debt limits of the Basic Law. Note well: Open at the top and without time limitation. That is unbelievable. 

Besides, today in Article 87a of the Basic Law, of which all of you here formulate lies, is that debt-financed military support would be one time only. That is in the Basic Law. The truth is: You conceal, with the debt mountains created today, the giant budget problems which you in any case would have had. The truth is: This coalition could not draw up its first of all budgets in the summer of 2025 in conformity with the constitution, if you did not today approve a giant gulp from the bottle of future tax payments. You want to create an enormous ancillary budget which nearly doubles the money available for your dubious purposes. You obtain the means to govern authoritatively for four years, cost what it will. So too could Laurel and Hardy govern [Sie erschleichen sich die Mittel, um vier Jahre durchzuregieren, koste es, was es wolle. So könnten auch Dick und Doof regieren]. 

In a real Cold War, the GDR, for 40 years until 1991, could bring in Federal defense spending of a sum of two percent and more of GDP, quite without special debts. The Bundeswehr has no budget problem, but a management and strategy deficit. Yet who with negligent frankness talks up enmities and war, can naturally no longer pocket a peace dividend. 

The future indebtedness relations, ladies and gentlemen, were earlier only in times of war and pre-war. The war capacity demanded by Pistorious, Merz and von der Leyen shall be completed by a war financing without a war. That is irresponsible – not only fiscally. 

“Who is against debt is for Russian panzers in Germany.” That is the perfidious argument – from Frau Haßelmann – which brands every critical budget member as a traitor. That is a quite wicked level. Do not make an enemy of both East and West! Invest in diplomacy! We will then need billions less for the military. And it is not initially clear what then shall be the defense policy ideas behind the new, unlimited armaments spending: An EU army, or perhaps a NATO with the U.S.A. or without the U.S.A.? It’s all open. Yet there is not unlimited money in a machine which does not even have a basic plan. We will give you here no 13-figure blank check. The way to the war economy goes without us. 

Your chancellorship, Herr Merz, leads, before its beginning, without any emergency, to a crisis of democracy. In case this delegitimizing coup against the 21^st German Bundestag and against the people’s will ascertained by the Bundestag election is in fact forced through, then is actually just the question: Where is the Constitution Defense when it is needed? 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, March 13, 2025, Finances and Values

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/213, pp. 27703-27704. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Herr Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

We live in historic times. Yet no applicant for the Chancellor’s office in so brief a time has broken so many election promises as you, Herr Merz. Border controls, you no longer want, refusals certainly not. Deportation of those obliged to leave? Nonsense! Debt brake? Away with it, even though it is in your election program. You will enter history as the gravedigger of the debt brake which you in the election campaign just as vehemently as mendaciously defended. 

Without consideration, you sacrifice the well-being of the citizens so by hook or crook to become Chancellor. You have therein agreed with the SPD, the great election loser, to approve beforehand the largest debts package since the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany. Around one trillion euros – 1,000 billion – which is just so unclear as your entire profile. You want to force that through with an unscrupulous attack on our constitution and on democratic legitimacy, which you, with the dubious special sessions and rush jobs, make contemptible. 

Because the election results do not suit you, you again bring in the old Bundestag – thus, forces which the voters voted out and punished – with whose help you want to tie the hands of the newly elected Bundestag by means of a trillion in additional debt. These procedures show your contempt for the will of the voters. These procedures derive from your contempt for the democratic legitimization process, and these procedures derive from your character, Herr Merz. 

500 billion euros of special debts which you re-classify as “special funds” [Sondervermögen] for barely defined infrastructure measures and for the nullification of the debt brake, and for additional, in any case not more precise, defense expenditures in a similar sum, yet without an upper limit, and debts for climate protection so as to purchase the assent of the Greens. That is a gigantic mortgage with which you have indebted the coming generations who need to answer for this spending frenzy. 

With your blank check rises the debt burden per taxpayer – this value is more significant than the usually given per capita indebtedness – from today’s 58,500 euros to over 77,700 euros, that is an increase of 33 percent. Measured by GDP, Gross Domestic Product, Germany’s debt burden with your coup will rise from the present 64 percent to over 85 percent, and that is nothing other than a financial policy coup d’état which you here manage. 

The German government bond is valued as a risk-free benchmark for the costs of borrowing in the euro area. Germany’s financial policy change of course thus has negative effects on the risk premiums of German state bonds; that is to say: We will need to pay higher interest rates. 

At the announcement of your plans, the return for ten-year German government bonds rose in one day around 16 basis points, and in one week until today over 50 basis points – and that, even though the ECB had previously again reduced the interest rates 25 basis points. You thereby not only shrink the scope of action of future governments and drive the German state finances into derangement. By your actions you put at risk the creditworthiness of Germany in the international financial market. 

You thereby similarly endanger the house of cards of the weak euro currency, the existence of which is still primarily based on the present triple-A top credit. Germany will lose this triple-A rating as a result of your irresponsibility, Herr Merz. The interest rates will go through the roof and the euro will be devalued with massive consequences for the people. People in this country will be paying for that by higher interest rates on mortgages, through higher rents and rising prices for import goods for production and consumption. 

Your reasonings are just as pretentious as mendacious, as we’ve heard here today. You conjure up an ostensible “suddenly altered world situation” and stir up a war panic so as to intimidate and make pliant the citizens. It is the same cheap manipulation with which earlier governments have supported themselves in the Corona hysteria and the climate mania so as to justify the massive expansion of state spending and the limitations of freedom. And you commit this grotesque enormity just at this moment when the U.S.A. and Russia are about to end the mass death in the Ukraine, while you, the black-red-green coalition, want to there unconcernedly sink financial aid and armaments. 

Yes, it is right: Germany needs to do more for its defense capability so as to create an army which does not just devour money but is also fully mission-ready for the defense of the country. Yet required for that is no debts watering can, which will be exactly so thrown away as the first so-called special funds. Required for that is first a strategy, and then targeted expenditures. To recruit motivated soldiers, required is not only money, but a positive, patriotic Selfbild of one’s own nation and one’s own army. For a woke, leftist ideology will no one give his life. 

And right: Germany urgently needs to invest in its neglected and rotting infrastructure. I ask myself: What in the last decades have you actually done as you were in the government? Yet also for that, a previously manipulated in the budget law, 500 billion euro shunting station is not the solution. Infrastructure and defense are core duties of state action. To appropriately finance them, the priorities of state expenditures need to be correctly set. 

A total state income in taxes and duties of over two trillion euros does not signify the solution of still more debt, but to rigorously slash superfluous spending. Thus eliminate all incentives for immigration into the social system. End the illegal immigration by closing the borders. Concern yourselves for a turning back without exception and a consistent sending back. End the horrendous subventions for climate protection and the failed energy change. Eliminate all payments to so-called NGOs, which in truth are not when they are dependent on state money. In this way, you can liberate a three-figure billion contribution in the budget to invest in infrastructure, defense and domestic security, and nevertheless still reduce taxes. 

Your exploratory paper negotiated with the Social Democrats is a declaration of capitulation before the green-socialist desires for which you have thrown overboard nearly all of your election promises. One may well ask, what you still want to offer the Greens after you submissively threw yourself on your knees. What you have charged to social and economic policy bears throughout the handwriting of the SPD and the Greens: Redistribution, subventions, state interference, Verbote. For this lamentable result, you betrayed your voters, ripped wide open the debts sluices and damaged the constitution. 

This voter fraud and this attack on democracy you’ve publicly planned with care. The unworthy presentation which you delivered here, Herr Merz, sounds now like an end-stage, black Ampel. It happens, just as each time it has happened: Those who vote for the CDU get presented with a left-green Politik. 

Because you cling to the firewall, you deliver yourself over to green-left-red majorities. You arrogantly show contempt for the votes of over ten million voters, who voted for the AfD, and thus for a political new beginning right of center. The duties, to which you have not awoken, continue to lie at hand: To correct the failed leftist policy which has led the country to loss of prosperity, de-industrialization, collapse of domestic security, collapse of infrastructure and public order. The wrong way of mass migration, squandering of tax money, and a planned economy, is to be left behind. We need to again bring Germany to the right way. 

We of the AfD are unalterably ready to take up these duties and assume responsibility, yet not with you, Herr Merz, and also not with the Union which maintains you as Chancellor candidate and a left-green policy. Render to this country, Herr Merz, a service, a quite great service: Give up wanting to become Chancellor. Since you cannot do it. On this point, Angela Merkel was right. Your time has run out, before you’ve at all begun. The Union should separate itself from you – for the good of our country and the good of their party; since you cannot do it. Why, Herr Merz? Because you have no principles and no values.

 

I am grateful.

 

 

 

[trans: tem]

Matthais Moosdorf, January 29, 2025, Ukraine and Corruption

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/209, pp. 27149-27150. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

With the election of Donald Trump, the Western leading powers began to set policy aright. The Trump Administration’s most recent Ukraine peace plan is – with the exception of EU membership – identical with the peace motion of the AfD. For that very reason, the new U.S. government supports our party’s position of reason and rejects your war delusion. It was of course recognized by the AfD since 2022 that weapons deliveries without negotiations prolong the war, exact countless human lives on both sides, and can produce only an ancillary peace diplomacy. 

Since 2022, according to available numbers, the Ukraine has received from around 40 countries a total of 424 billion euros in promised weapons and financial assistance. In the year 2017, Ukrainian economic experts estimated that the Ukraine’s corruption level was comparable with that of Uganda. 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): Worse even than Russia!

In 2019, Transparency International believed that, in regards armaments expenditures, some 30 percent of the budget disappeared into unknown channels. And today the country stands there in this ranking somewhat like Algeria, 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): Radio Moscow!

yet clearly behind states like Ethiopia or Burkina Faso. A counselor of the Ukrainian president explained in 2023 that money would be pilfered without penalty, and the officials – cite – “steal as if there were no tomorrow”. 

According to one study of the Ukrainian agency for corruption in the year 2023, 88 percent of the population and 81 percent of business held the corruption to be the most considerable problem in the Ukraine. The three most corrupt areas are the customs service, the military, and public procurement. 

Agnieszka Brugger (Greens): The Ukraine in regards the anti-corruption campaign has gone up according to Transparency International, despite the war. Did you realize that, or do you just recite the talking points from Moscow? 

In March 2024, 70 percent of the Ukrainians were of the opinion that their government profits from the war and increasingly sinks into corruption. From January 2023 to June 2024, the perception of increasing corruption rose from 15 to 49 percent nationwide. 

            Sebastian Schäfer (Greens): Then how much do you make from Moscow                                each month? 

Jörg Nünnberger (SPD): How would it be if you consider the Ukrainian war victims? The civilians who each day were killed?

Interpol warned already in June 2022 that delivered weapons arrive in the hands of organized crime. And the New York Times reported that the whereabouts of around 60 percent of the goods deficiently delivered to the Ukraine is so far unexplained. All of this is no Putin lie; 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): No, that’s simply Radio Moscow!

since the U.S.A. is now investigating the whereabouts of 100 billion euros of Ukraine aid. Under the guidance of Robert Gates, over 200 researchers are thereby engaged. Storch explained it’s about theft, fraud and corruption. 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): Of which you know! 

The Pentagon reported 63 percent of the military aid has disappeared without a trace. 63 percent! 

            Carolin Bachmann (AfD): Listen! Shame on you!

Germany is the second largest bilateral aid donor to the Ukraine after the U.S.A. Our support is more than double so high as that from France and Italy together. In 2024, it was again double in comparison to 2023. Yet the EU control council set up in June 2024 has so far named merely three members as independent experts for an audit. A great interest in transparency thus obviously does not exist. 

The AfD demands of the Federal government, following the U.S. model, to finally set up a staff of at least 50 members which examines the entire German Ukraine assistance of almost 40 billion euros, and finally uncovers and prosecutes corruption. Your motion for an additional three billion euros we of course reject. 

And besides: The change of times begins now! 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

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]