Alice Weidel
Budget
German Bundestag,
November 27, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/130, pp. 16291-16293
[Alice
Weidel is a chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland delegation in the
German Bundestag. Ralph Brinkhaus is Bundestag floor leader of the governing
CDU party. Soli is a surtax imposed to help finance the unification of eastern
and western Germany. The Neue Zürcher Zeiting is a Swiss newspaper said to be
favored by conservative Germans.]
Right honorable Frau President. Right
honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Dear Herr Brinkhaus, I have seldom heard from
you so unsubstantial [unkonkrete] a speech. That was only hollow phrases. Not
once of substance. I know you can do better. I do not know whether that is
compatible with your job as delegation chairman.
Michael
Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): As for you, we still do not know that!
Dear Frau Merkel, a simultaneous withdrawal
from nuclear and coal power is not simply irresponsible, but is bald-faced
nonsense. Here too, “We can do it” [Wir schaffen das] is of no use.
Michael
Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): That was not at all a phrase.
Whom you have completely lost sight of – in
your lack of substance, to which we in the meantime have become accustomed – is
the taxpaying citizen. For the simply normal citizen who gets up each morning,
takes care of her children –
Johannes Kahrs (SPD): In
Switzerland? Or where?
– drives to work, pays taxes and keeps this
community running, there is in this budget not much to celebrate. You also fail
this time to mention that this record-sized budget is only made possible by
your grasping much too deeply into the citizen’s pocket. The patchwork, partial
abolition of the solidarity surtax [Soli]
is symptomatic of that.
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): The AfD again fights for the rich, as always!
90 percent of the taxpayers will be relieved,
you say. Yet half of the unjustifiably collected money, thus a good 10 billion
euros, you want to further retain – thereby violating the constitution, it
ought to be said.
Taxation justice is quite simple: Abolish the
Solo – the Soli – for everyone. Those grins of yours will also disappear.
Abolish the Soli for everyone, now
and immediately, and not the year after next before the election. That is our
demand and we stand by it!
The excess of state income must be given back
to the citizens. Precisely because Germany is sliding into recession must the
fetters be loosened by means of a reduction and simplification of the income
tax, without the middle-class bulge and cold progression, –
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): Again the neo-liberal theory of the AfD!
– by means of a distinct reduction and
simplification of the sales tax which most heavily burdens small- and middle-income
consumers, and the introduction of family splitting by means of married couple
splitting so as to counteract the tax prejudice against parents.
There is room for that. The entire public tax
income under your government since 2005 has doubled by 900 billion euros. That
is always forgotten: Doubled! And this is money falsely expended. You have for
the most part consumed these billions and allowed the infrastructure to decay,
instead of investing where it is necessary.
You have maneuvered our country into a
dead-end with the great, flawed decisions which will go down in history as the
three great violations of the law: the unconditional euro rescue, uncontrolled
immigration and the Green-populist energy transformation; it cannot be said otherwise.
Instead of correcting these failed decisions,
you despairingly attempt to cover-up the consequences. The much prized schwarze Null [balanced budget] is lately
owed to the mass expropriation of citizens and savers by means of the zero
interest rate policy of the EZB. You can prettify your
budget numbers because the federal government no longer pays interest on its
debts – the price however is paid by the citizen by means of a continuing,
massive decline in living standards. Since savings accounts and life insurance
policies are already ruined as forms of investment, you next wish to fleece the
purchaser of security funds by means of a financial transactions tax, which
only touches the small saver and investor. Thus appears the Groko [grand coalition government]’s
policy for the working people.
You are making private provision impossible.
At the same time, the tax burden of statutory pension insurance for new retirees
has increased five-fold since 2010. The euro rescue and the insatiable Tax
State create the very old-age poverty which you subsequently lament. The
secondary taxation of pensions is senseless and anti-social. It must be
thoroughly abolished.
He who is driven into risky investments by
negative interest rates will in the future no longer be able to make good his
loss with a tax adjustment, not even retroactively. That must be made known.
And that is not enough. Anonymous purchases
of gold shall be drastically restricted.
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): Yes, you are well acquainted with the purchase of gold.
You laugh at that, and it is quite clear to
me: That you only are laughing!
There are presently demands to require the
general duty to report large cash transactions –
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): Can you stick to the facts?
– or to set a narrow limit on cash purchases.
Yet cash is freedom. You however conduct a war against financial freedom and defense
of personal data and you put citizens who want to protect the rights of freedom
under a general suspicion. So it appears.
You have likewise declared war on freedom of
opinion. The flop with the NetzDG was not enough for you, you also want to expand this
wretched law: Reporting duties for service providers, an entirely new set of
officials – you are good at that – who on the basis of gobbledygook employ
phrases like “hate” and agitate”.
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): As to hate and agitate, you are the expert!
Expressions of opinion shall be filtered and
accusations brought. That sounds like Orwell and it is indeed meant to be.
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): Hate and agitation is typical AfD!
Divergent expression of opinion will be
criminalized. That is your plan!
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): You live off of hate and agitation.
Representative democracy naturally can also thus
be abolished. It can be annulled by stealth.
Johannes Kahrs
(SPD): Like you have people thrown out of the hall because they simply have a
fit of coughing!
Not for nothing do repressive regimes like
Belorussia interest themselves in the NetzDG and your internet snooper law [Internet-schnüffelgesetze]. The general
assault on economic freedom takes place under the cloak, amongst other forms, of
“climate defense”. It is exploited by a radical minority – we hear the braying
here – of climate apocalypticers, of eco-marxists negligent of prosperity –
thus described by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
– the Swiss theme, upon which you are always harping – so as to create a
climate of panic and emergency. That serves as justification for new taxes, as
for example the CO2 pricing, for new bans, paternalism and massive intrusion into
the rights of ownership and freedom.
There is no climate emergency. A more
responsible and more frugal relation with our resources is urgently called for,
just as is the free research into new technologies. But what you are
propagating here as climate defense is pure ideology.
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): There you are the expert. Hate and ideology!
The question is not “Life or death?” but “Freedom
or eco-socialism?”
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): What a phrase-making machine! Can you also do substance?
Besides, future technologies will not be
found at the Green table, like you put forward. Billions in subventions have already
been put senselessly into the the energy transformation – and yet more billions
for electro-mobility shall follow. Thereby will a non-competitive technology be
made competitive. Yet subventions distort and hinder competition and the free unfolding
of innovative powers.
You are driving toward the mis-allocation of
capital. We will have to pay for decades for the consequences of this policy. The
cascade of job eliminations in the automobile, energy and chemical businesses
is just the beginning: 20,000 jobs lost at Continental, 15,000 at Bosch, 10,000
at Daimler, 9,500 at Audi, 7,000 at VW, 3,000 at BASF, and the list goes on.
And that is only the tip of the iceberg, the
job losses actually go on throughout the value-added chain. It effects the
productive core of the German economy. It effects the manufacturer of
investment goods, the investor, the small and smallest supplier in the area. That
is the misfortune: According to your tax policy, the taxpayer finances his own
loss of employment. That is the irresponsibility of your government.
As the red-red-greens presently ruin the
housing market in Berlin with rental controls, threats of expropriation…, a DDR situation is no longer far away.
What the SPD is planning at the federal level is no better. Massive incursion
into private ownership by means of rent control and restrictions by the allocation
of modernization costs.
And the property tax: Instead of abolishing
this anachronistic tax, it will be used as a preliminary stage of
expropriation, by which ownership will be made unremunerative. The plan of the
federal government to force homeowners against their will to install insulation
or electric auto storage batteries moves along these same lines. That must be
for once be put forward, what you here have in mind!
A once prosperous industrial country that
mindlessly renounces the branch of its own well-being –
Johannes
Kahrs (SPD): What nonsense!
– makes itself the laughing stock of the
world. Please turn away from your fatal detour.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
