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]

Alice Weidel, November 28, 2023, Crisis

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/139 pp. 17646-17648. 

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

Not two years Ampel, and Germany is stuck in a permanent crisis and stands on the edge of insolvency. This breach of the constitution is unexampled in the history of Germany. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Unexampled is your stupidity!

The citizens in this situation did not await your government declaration, Herr Scholz, but your resignation declaration. Two-thirds of Germans want there finally be an end to this Ampel. That this government is still in office shows your contempt for the sovereign, the citizens. 

They have enough of a Chancellor who with ostensible memory lapses wants to wiggle out of his entanglement in one of the Republic’s largest tax fraud scandals where evidence vanishes. 

They have enough of an economic illiterate as Economy Minister who ruins the economy and who expropriates the citizens by means of a heating diktat. 

They have enough of a Foreign Minister who expends 100,000 euros per year for her styling, yet stumbles from one diplomatic disaster to the next. 

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): We have enough of you, Frau Weidel!

It is wondrous that you of the FDP again bellow there. They also of course have enough of an FDP Finance Minister who issues unconstitutional budgets so as to finance this green ship of fools and who wants to abolish the debt brake. 

            Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus (FDP): Such idiocy!

And they have enough of an Interior Minister who herself is the greatest security risk because she does not want to defend the borders and the citizens. 

This coalition governs against reason, against reality, against the will and the welfare of the citizens. 

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): Against you!

And it governs against our constitution. 

We are stuck in the deepest economic crisis since there was a Federal Republic of Germany. The de-industrialization is fully underway. One insolvency tsunami after another rolls across our country. That is your work, the work of your planned economy minister and your highly subsidized energy transition and climate policy. 

You make energy more expensive by means of state intervention, then distribute subventions to parts of industry, while you leave the Mittelstand hanging with horrendous energy prices and, by means of CO₂ duties and a transportation fee increase, additionally raise the prices. This intervention spiral leads directly to impoverishment. Businesses, normal earners and pensioners bleed for your transformation. You yourselves break your promise not to again raise the value-added tax for the restaurant trade. You thereby give the death blow to the hospitality industry. 

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): She’s right, there!

Your citizens wage [Bürgergeld] makes the social crisis acute: The diligent are punished. No wonder that in entire branches valuable labor forces flee from the tax and duties spiral into the Bürgergeld. 

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): That is just rubbish!

He who works is the dummy and no longer bends his back for himself and his, but for profiteers from all the world. 

62 percent of families receiving Bürgergeld have no German passport. Your Bürgergeld is a labeling swindle. It is migrant money, an immigration magnet. 

The migration crisis brings our country to the edge of collapse. Almost half a million social migrants this year alone, figuring together the asylum applications and family reunification – according to official numbers, that costs 50 billion euros per year. You shelter these masses of  people in luxury hotels and quarter them in old folks homes, while the normal earner and pensioner scarcely make ends meet. 

Despite that, you leave the door wide open and believe you can again pacify the people by ineffective action for action’s sake. Yet citizens feel in their bones that uncontrolled mass immigration has led to an encompassing security crisis. 

Many more Germans than immigrants become victims of crimes of homicide, violence and brutality than the reverse. Violent crime explodes, the number of foreign perpetrators also. 

For women, the public space has become an area of risk which they prefer to avoid. The crime statistics record more than two brutal gang rapes per day. What have you let loose on our people? For the decay of the domestic security, you of the CDU and CSU bear exactly so the responsibility. 

And for once rouse yourselves over the imported, Islamist Judenhass; that it, as you might have noticed, exists. You have hauled hundreds of thousands of young men into the country who are socialized in violence-prone cultures hostile to Jews. 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): With hostility to Jews, you of the AfD                                know best.

You allow that fundamentalist Islamic assemblies form a state within a state. 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Shabby! So shabby!

The responsibility for growing anti-semitism you, with fake statistics, have ascribed to the home population. Your sudden activity is hypocritical as long as you continue to be silent concerning the everyday terror, hostile to Germans, against the home population. 

The crisis has long since become a comprehensive, manifest crisis of trust. Your policy delegitimizes democratic institutions in the eyes of honest citizens. You do so as if the devastating decision of the Federal Constitutional Court had not been given. You want to have this breach of the constitution followed by the next. 

Yet you certainly have no gap in the billions; that is ridiculous. It is absurd considering a record total tax intake of one trillion euros. 

            Christoph Meyer (FDP): Just in 2025. 

That needs be imagined: One trillion euros. That means, you have not too little. You have a record total tax intake with which you are unable to deal, like all socialists. 

The way out of the crisis leads through a return to reason. Stop the mass migration, by which you close the borders and turn off immigration magnets like Bürgergeld, children’s basic security, cut-rate passports and residency for all.

Abolish the climate funds and end the energy and mobility transition grab in the billions. It is so simple. Renounce distributing tens of billions to all the world for ideological development aid, for climate defense in India, and for the Ukraine. 

Reduce the payments to the EU. Commit yourselves to a free reform of the European community of states. Then money also remains for our country’s urgent problems: Lowering taxes and duties, promotion of families, secure pensions, healing the healthcare system, housing construction, better schools, secure inner cities and borders and a functioning army. 

Yet you risk control collapse, chaos, and state bankruptcy. We therefore need a new government so as to come out of this crisis swamp. Open the way to new elections and redeem this country from the Ampel government. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Tino Chrupalla, November 24, 2023, Debt Brake

AfD Kompakt, November 24, 2023. 

Lindner’s decision leads to a breach in the dyke. Already next morning there are demands to also suspend the debt brake next year, or to entirely annul it. SPD and CDU/CSU thus make themselves fulfillment helpers for green lobby interests and put in play the citizens’ prosperity. We are committed in the Bundestag to the the interests of citizens. An audit is now required so that we can identify and eliminate superfluous expenditures. 

 

[trans: tem]

Peter Boehringer, November 16, 2023, Budget

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/137, pp. 17323-17324. 

Frau President. 

The Federal Constitutional Court has announced a decision not surprising to us. The first of all Ampel budget, that is of 2021-2022, was declared unconstitutional and, what is more, null. I refer to our resolution motion of that time, Drucksache 20/488, and the 60 billion euro additional debt put through by you in 2022 in a 2021 supplementary budget law. There, we foretold not only the decision, but almost exactly the three-part grounds of Karlsruhe, 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): Here, here!

not because we had had a crystal ball or excellent jurists, but because the legal situation was then already fully clear. We formulated in a motion then, word for word, the law “trespasses in direct, obvious ways against central, constitutionally anchored fundamentals of the budget law”. 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): Oh!

One thus actually can only declare with frank intent that the Ampel government, practically with its first act in office, simply and completely disregarded provisions of the Basic Law. 

The Ampel in 2022 wanted to unconditionally take up the 60 billion euros in a still possible 2021 supplementary credit, even though the year 2021 was already past and even though the expenditures based on a CO₂ ideology had not the least causal relation with Corona. 

It further is very positive that with the decision will now finally be brought to an end an accounting system of debts in special funds outside the debt brake, recognized by us as unconstitutional since its introduction. Herr Post, it is far beyond the 60 billion euros. 

The Finance Minister also now apparently acknowledges this. Yesterday evening, Herr Lindner said in the Budget Committee that the decision re-evaluates state practice. Well, actually not, Herr Lindner. It puts back on a legal footing the illegal state practice exercised by all of you of the old parties, inclusive of the CDU, since 2021. 

Read without reserve here the entire decision. The trick, used by all of you, of the multi-year formation of reserves for use at the pump after the official end of an emergency situation was in retrospect generally unconstitutional, thereby among others the 170 billion euros in credit-financed reserve supply for the WSF [Economic Stability Fund] in fiscal year 2022, and also besides the 26 billion euro formation of reserves in the EKF by the CDU-led government in a 2020 supplementary budget. 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): Oops!

Allow me to cite the strong words of a colleague directed then on July 2, 2020 to Finance Minister Scholz: 

“Today you present a second supplementary budget…it violates the Basic Law…the second supplementary budget encroaches upon essential constitutional principles like per annum…truth and clarity…I do not understand why one can make a career in the SPD in Germany only if one presents unconstitutional budgets…” 

He further said: 

I do not understand “why the CDU/CSU Bundestag delegation here becomes the assistants aide of a possible breach of the constitution. I hold that to be a gigantic failure, Herr Rehberg.” 

In parentheses: CDU. End citation. 

That was then exactly so represented by me and in the AfD motions. The citation however stems from today’s FDP delegation chief, Christian Dürr. It’s nice that you have found us! Unfortunately, the FDP in the Ampel immediately forgot its knowledge of that time, Herr Dürr. 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): Really quite embarrassing!

The 2024 budget put forward, due to the accounting practice used therein, will from the day of its issuance be constitutionally assailable. I thus ask you all: How long shall continue the abuse of such special funds with booked credits, not legal as measured by Article 115 of the Basic Law? How long do you want to drag this out? Already, it runs for years. 

In the climate and transformation fund, the decision – which is legally uncontested – mathematically and legally leads to that for your most important shadow budget the money will run out already in 2024. My delegation for certain, honestly said, does not find that so tragic, since it deals with almost only ideologically-based misappropriations. Following this decision, the currently presented Ampel budget cannot however now be passed as put forward. 

We demand, as already for long, the almost complete cancellation of all KTF [climate and transformation fund] titles, and we demand a new edition of the 2024 budget process under an accounting for the special funds credits and within the debt brake. 

In a government focused on Germany, no taxes for years would need be increased and – without failed euro rescue, Corona, energy and social ideologies – also no illegal debts be made. Finally make non-ideological policy conforming to the law for the national welfare of Germany! 

Hearty thanks. 

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): Congratulations on your ideological speech!                                Mein Gott! 

 

[trans: tem]

Martin Reichardt, November 9, 2023, Children’s Basic Security

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/134, 16885-16886. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

The Children’s Basic Security [Kindergrundsicherung] will be praised by the green Ampel as a heart’s project. Yet we all certainly know what actually are the heart’s projects of this green Ampel: Disconnection of the climate-friendly nuclear power plants, weapons deliveries to war zones, 

            Nina Stahr (Greens): The theme!

comprehensive de-industrialization of Germany and unbridled mass immigration. That is the political framework with which you drive families in Germany into poverty. Yet, for that, you will be rightly punished throughout Germany at the elections, and das ist gut so. 

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): Pride comes before a fall!

The expenditures in connection with flight and migration alone in this year amount to 48.2 billion euros. 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): At least!

For your big toss for families, you have a crummy 2.4 billion left over. And that is a scandal which speaks for itself. 

All of this of course becomes the more perverse as your entire social rhetoric is continually sabotaged by your own concrete policy. What you give to families on one side, you take away from them on the other side. The effect of your Kindergrundsicherung immediately dissolves  into nothing in the face of shocks which families receive in regards purchasing, the glance at the corresponding accounting and the energy prices, ladies and gentlemen.

So it is to be designated as one thing only, namely a labeling swindle. And here we have once again politically placed you, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): Oh!

For the Kindergrundsicherung, it is so as for the Bürgergeld [citizens’ wage]. Much money has been inequitably pumped into imported poverty since 2015. The number of foreign children in receipt of transfer benefits has tripled since 2010. 

Kai Whittaker (CDU/CSU): Here, someone apparently has not at all peeked at the law! Had no desire to read the legal text, Herr colleague. Or what? 

Martin Gassner-Herz (FDP): It was too complicated for him! He understood nothing!

In 2010, it was 303,962 children, this year it is 935,000 children, most of whom come from Syria and the Ukraine. And I say to you: The opinion of the people in this country makes clear that the understanding for a policy which gives away the social benefits to all the world and drives one’s own people into poverty has finally been used up, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): Crude nonsense! 

The Kindergrundsicherung is an additional instrument for the financial benefit of all the world and provides an additional incentive for migration into our moreover wasted social system, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Emilia Fester (Greens): Can you not for once think of something new?

In addition, the Kindergrundsicherung is an additional building block within the left-green reconstruction of society. It is in line with an entire chain of similarly mounted projects, as, for example, the so-called children’s rights in the Basic Law. All of these projects have one thing in common: The child shall be removed from the family social relation and transferred into the hands of a supposedly kindly, leftist political state. And we will not let you get away with that! 

            Anke Hennig (SPD): That is just ridiculous, what you are saying here! 

Nina Stahr (Greens): Because you do not tolerate that children have their own opinion! Inconceivable!

You propagandize for the de-coupling of the child from its parents. Greens and SPD especially want state command over the children’s beds. Yet we will prevent that, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Nina Stahr (Greens): We want that children have rights! That is a difference!

The families, the parents – that is for all of you just a burdensome intermediate level which hides a risk. You want that children be raised and financed not by their parents, but better by leftist ideologues, and exactly so raised as you would gladly have it. Yet this also we will not allow, ladies and gentlemen.   

            Stephanie Aeffner (Greens): You haven’t cast a glance at the law!

In conclusion, the following may be said: With this law, you go a further step along the way, well-known by you, to the disempowerment [Entmündigung] of the parents, the disempowerment of families, and the happiness of all the world. 

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion.

Yet we of the AfD will not participate in this. For we as the only ones say: Our families and our Germany first! 

            Annika Klose (SPD): Name one concrete example! Name just one!

Many thanks.

           Anke Hennig (SPD): Ridiculous! 

 

[trans: tem]

Gunnar Beck, October 4, 2023, Green Bonds

AfD Kompakt, October 4, 2023. 

How deficient actually is the so-called Green Economy is seen not only in the horrendous promotion programs for windpower and photovoltaic at the cost of the citizens and consumers, but also in the so-called Green Bonds. So as to be even only rudimentarily competitive, these loans require a green EU mark of quality so that they will at all be purchased and traded in large quantities. 

Under normal circumstances – without this unspeakable EU economy planned around the Green Deal – the current loans would scarcely arouse an interest. And this mark of quality shows how stubborn and aloof the EU elites act, far from any connection to reality. We of the AfD work for the citizens and want to return a sense of freedom, prosperity and growth to the expensive as sin Green Deal. 

 

[trans: tem]

Wolfgang Wiehle, September 21, 2023, Railways Administration

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/122, pp. 15143-15144. 

Right honorable Frau President. Valued colleagues. 

There are almost 200 ways how the Bund finances the Bahn. That was computed for us in the last months. I have understood that as a warning, that this complexity is a problem. A good Bahn reform should drastically simplify that. And now the government lays on the table before us a law which makes of these 200 ways probably 250 or 300. If you want to demonstrate that you cannot do Bahn reform, then you have thereby really succeeded. 

Yes, all of that will be later improved, you will say. Yet on a bad foundation you can build no good house and this fatal failure you clearly make again – colleague Donth just now used the same image. The analysis thus needs to agree. Decisive for an effective and transparent direction of the Bahn is the legal form of the Bahn undertakings. The new infrastructure company shall now again be a joint-stock company. That is a legacy from the time of the Bahn stock market plan, and that is the worst of all possibilities for control by the owners. 

Today the Federal railways construction law is on the daily order. By means of this law, the Bahn shall in the future receive money not only for the construction of the Bahn sections but also for their maintenance and repair. Yet that does not always apply, but only when there is an extra contract between Bund and Bahn. Otherwise, you apparently do not manage control of the Bahn. If you now make a new contract for each new measure, then we are soon at 300 ways of financing. 

The Audit Authority moreover sounds the alarm because the Transportation Ministry in another contract proposes hectic changes which could result in a disadvantage to the Bund. Here, it is about the performance and financing agreement which with an authentic Bahn reform will necessarily be, plain and simply, superfluous. 

A couple of new Bahn billions in the Transportation budget, then still a couple of billions from the shadow budget “climate and transformation fund”, additional billions as equity of the Deutschen Bahn: What you tie up here crowns the financial chaos. 

Because the money still does not suffice, you get it from the citizens, all the same whether the trains run or not. Yes, from the citizens; since we all must pay for the billions of your brutal increase of the trucking fee. Everything that we buy in the supermarket ultimately comes by truck. 

            Matthais Gastel (Greens): What?

One already reads in the media how thereby the prices of foodstuffs climb. The inflation will be still higher and the citizens still poorer. 

We require an authentic Bahn reform and that is something other than your bungled job. Who does it fundamentally, gives the Bahn and its subsidiaries a new legal form. Yet you need to enforce it against the great red union at the Bahn. The Bund as owner needs to take in hand the direction of the railway networks. The Politik is responsible for the infrastructure. Period. And for that, the Bund needs to clearly command the firms’ rail network, not by umpteen contracts, but by one, unequivocal structure. 

The Federal railways construction law now goes to committee. The AfD delegation clearly names the problem. Because the wrangling in the Ampel is not less than the chaos at the Bahn, hopes for an improvement are however limited. We will in no case vote for your adventurous cobbling [abenteuerlichen Flickschusterei] as it now stands in the draft law.

 

[trans: tem]