German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/23,
pp. 2314-2316.
Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.
Dear spectators in the hall and at the screens.
The budget consultations for the 2025 Federal budget lay
behind us, and for us in the AfD Bundestag delegation, in regards these
consultations, was precisely one, single question decisive: How can we
financially relieve the citizens and the economy. For this of all is exactly the
decisive question: What can we do for the citizens and the economy so as to
finally relieve them from the high taxes and duties. This question we need to answer.
And for my delegation, I can say: We have answered this question.
Seen fiscally, the essence of our state, simply said, rests
on two pillars. That is for one, the demography; and that is for the other, a
functioning economy with sufficient jobs.
As everyone in the country knows, the demographic
development has for us as a state long since slipped away. The birthrate in the
year 2024 has again fallen, and currently lies at 1.35 children which a woman
has on average in Germany. That means for our levy-financed pension system,
sufficient contribution payers are no longer available. And that, in turn,
means that at some time sufficient people will no longer be there who generate
for our people their pensions.
For the pension is plainly no credit, but one pays with his
contributions the pensions of others, and indeed in the hope that later, when
one is himself at pension age, the younger may generate the pension for
oneself. That this at some time for Germany becomes a problem is for long
recognized. And for just as long was nothing actually done about it. Yet the
day of the Big Bang is meanwhile no longer at a far distance, but one can now
already very well see it.
The 2025 Federal budget pension grant runs to, believe it or
not, 134.4 billion euros. That corresponds to 25.8 percent of expenditures from
the core budget; thus, an entire quarter. Taken from the total tax revenue of
the Federal government, the quota for the pension grant contributes even 34.7
percent. That is to say, that from the entire tax revenue of the Bund, every third euro flows as an added
contribution into the Pension Insurance. And we speak not of an upper, luxury
pension, but of a pension level of 48 percent.
In that the demography has long since slipped away from us, we
are therein reliant on that the second pillar of our system functions: The
economy. Without a properly running economy which offers enough jobs, I also
have no more contribution payers who finance the pensions of our seniors, and I
also have no more tax revenue from which every third euro can be stuck in the
pension.
In regards the health contribution, there is besides exactly
the same basic problem; which is namely financed also by contribution payers.
When we in Germany have fewer jobs, then we have fewer contributions for our
sickness insurance, and then arise also the financing gaps. Since the number of
insured and of treatments do not, ja,
decrease. On the contrary, also here, everything becomes more expensive. Alone
in the statutory sickness insurance in the coming year, 6.3 billion euros are lacking.
In the year after, 12 billion are lacking, the year after 18 billion, and at
the end of the legislature it is 24 billion euros.
These holes I can either fill by which I increase the
contribution amount for the insured. That would however make more expensive the
labor factor which now already is no longer at a competitive price. Or I need
also here again to go with tax money.
The situation is in any case dramatic, and we are directly
in a rapidly intensifying fiscal crisis. For us as the AfD delegation is it
thereby clear as sunshine that a reasonable Politik
needs now set everything, without compromise, on the stimulation of the
economy, since that which in no case may happen is that still more jobs are
lost to us which would have a consequence that we have still fewer contribution
payers for our pension and sickness insurance systems.
We in the AfD have told you all of this in the last ten
years here, and said what you need do so as to prevent this downfall. Yet you
did not want to listen. I have still well before my eyes the statements of the
political competitors and of the mainstream press that the evil AfD paints the
devil on the wall and with fear-mongering hunts for votes. That would certainly
not at all agree with the bad economic situation. – Yet we knew that we were
right. You needed to concede that this summer, since the Federal Statistics
Office has subjected its numbers since 2008 to a “reappraisal”, and – hoopla! – it at once came out that we
since 2023 are not in a situation of economic stagnation, but are stuck
knee-deep in a recession. That which was plainly just Fake News has thus now
become reality.
During this phase of statistical denial of reality, valuable
time has been lost in our country. The last three years, thus the time of the Ampel government, was the time that the rudder in
Germany would have been able, and needed to be, turned about. It needs be said
quite clearly: Now for some comes any help too late; and from now on, it
becomes really unpleasant; since the money is gone. It is gone, and it does not
come again.
The country’s citizens are fully right to rage over that. Yet
the hard reality is: It helps not at all. We need to so deal with this situation
as it now is, and here we all again sit in the same boat, whether one wants
that or not.
With our programmatic approaches we could in the last budget
years still achieve savings relatively easily. Yet for us now will it become
more difficult. Precisely here besides, the good, old debt brake would now come
strongly to bear. Since it forces politicians who simply cannot say no to
nevertheless give consideration to where one could then save, and what of all could
then be structurally changed.
Markus
Frohnmaier (AfD): So it is!
This Federal government freed itself from this constraint,
as you know, with its debt putsch and
unashamedly piled up the most crass indebtedness which this country has ever
seen. Yet we of the AfD delegation have ourselves further enjoined this same
restraint and maintain in our budget plan the original debt brake.
And despite that, we would relieve the citizens and the
economy. How do we do this? We have presented a total of 1,000 motions to amend
the Federal budget: In Herr Klingbeil’s draft budget, we can dispense with 111
billion euros from his state expenditures in this year.
Where then do we see the greatest savings potential? Let us
begin with the payments to the European Union. In the 2025 draft budget, the
Federal government plans payments in the sum of 33.7 billion euros to Brussels.
This EU payment shall next year rise a further 14 billion euros to 47.7 billion
euros – quite as if money here in Germany simply grows on trees. Yet each year
there flows back to Germany just some 12 billion euros. And thus we finance
every year with two-figure billions in contributions to whichever bureaucrat
who regulates our cucumbers and deposit bottle caps. And from that, we have purely
nothing.
Far worse is that the EU in addition also wants to destroy
our automobile sector with a combustion engine Verbot. 3.2 million jobs are here in play. What that means for our
country, I have plainly explained to you.
While the German economy thus shrinks, we in addition
subsidize with our EU contributions our EU neighboring countries to which our firms
now emigrate. Inquire for once at Schöneck in the Vogtland how one finds it
that the firm TechniSat closes its plant there, all co-workers are laid off,
and the production will now be shifted to Poland – and that, after the
co-workers there for 33 long years have performed truly good work.
That may no longer continue...
[trans: tem]