Tino Chrupalla, March 23, 2022, Budget - I

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/24, pp. 1930-1932.

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

Herr Chancellor, your speech actually has clearly shown one thing: Germany absolutely is out of balance. What we have long warned you of, valued Federal government and your predecessors, is meanwhile everywhere evident. German society is divided, divided for those, just looking at the gas station, who see that their living now costs more money…After all the SPD’s election promises for a higher minimum wage, the citizens now stand before the fragments of an illusory prosperity and security and you, Herr Chancellor, are conclusively responsible for that. The means of your budget, upon which we here deliberate, need to be economized. All who with their work contribute daily to the creation of value do this; some of you perhaps are still acquainted with this and know what this means.

Valued colleagues, for more than two years we have demanded much of the citizens. Legally dubious preventive measures for combating the Corona virus have cost livelihoods and endangered prosperity. This affects small and mid-sized business just as it does the trades. Yet it is precisely these people who provide for the maintenance of our social security system. And here, not a word from you, Herr Chancellor, to the people. To whom it is clear: At the beginning of each of these investments, there must plainly be an audit: That belongs to ordinary budget planning. Those governing must be able to explain to the citizens how much they are expending and, before all things, why. Still much more important: This needs to be for the welfare of our country, and not just to appear plausible aboard Spaceship Berlin. You need to propose a vision for Germany – of that, there was not a word today – and for which you also need to describe an outline of a Federal budget.

You however tell fables of digitalization and my broadband, speak of social justice and generate precisely the opposite; namely, division. The digitalization of processes must be important for us; it is plainly not heating housing and even for the general building for future generations there was for long all too little positive influence.

Germany, ladies and gentlemen, lacks skilled workers and tradesmen. Without these, technical investments cannot be constructed and also not expected; for example, in the area of digital infrastructure. This situation does not lead to digital sovereignty but to a one-sided dependence. First of all must be secured a durable infrastructure in the areas of transport, communications, health, education, etc. This example is only a selection, and at the same time indicates how many building sites we are putting off. The distinction between the rural areas and the metropolitan areas increases at a speedy tempo. It is plainly the described imbalance – which you increase with your day to day political work.

The comrades of the SPD especially promised a lot in last year’s election campaign. Central was the increase of the minimum wage. From today’s perspective, this increase again no longer covers the cost of inflation. Food and fuel were just the beginning. There meanwhile follows scarcity of goods and there threatens a standstill of the manufacturing industries due to a lack of raw materials.

Which measures does the Federal government actually make use of? The Federal Finance Minister yesterday put forward his budget outline – nothing concrete was therein contained; even today, the Chancellor said nothing concrete – which was obsolete even at its presentation. You, valued Federal government, manage a policy of inflation in this country. You no longer conceal your disinterest in Germany and our citizens. Piece by piece, you meanwhile let fall your masks. The idea of a social market economy was buried for the benefit of an ideological red-green-dyed state policy.

The best example of that is the visit of Federal Minister Robert Habeck in Qatar. Ladies and gentlemen, for once this needs be known: Because the Federal government wants to efficiently and economically help to starve out Russia, we should renounce favorable deliveries of natural gas by means of North Stream 1 and 2 and the Economy Minister negotiates the delivery of Arab gas. Violations of human rights suddenly appear to no longer play a role, right honorable ladies and gentlemen. A more duplicit morality scarcely exists, valued Federal government.

Herr Chancellor, your policy marks an age of the extreme. The extreme position of wanting to make oneself free of Russian gas is the mirror image for seeing the goal of zero Covid. Both are ideologically driven delusions which endlessly squander resources and your goal can only be attained rudimentarily, if at all. Thus what then is your goal, Herr Chancellor? That today you have also not clearly expressed. To where do you actually want to lead our country? At the moment in any case, you drive the wedge ever deeper into our society. The citizens, for example,  were promised a freedom day – and you again maintain a Federal rules chaos. I agree with you that politics should always strive for a certain balance. Nevertheless, this balance needs to be arrived at in regards to the basis of the voters and naturally of our citizens. You however are blocking the future of our country.

Ladies and gentlemen, further in the Chancellor’s budget is found the area of eastern Germany. In that regard, there comes from you today, Herr Chancellor, not a single word. As you know, wide areas of the new Federal States share the same fate as, for example, areas in Nordrhein-Westfalen or also in Saarland, wrapped up under the keyword “structural change” – my favorite term. It however means the de-industrialization of wide tracts of land. The problems with that are known, yet now will certainly not be tackled. Money from structural promotion programs will be invested in cultural  and prestige projects, instead of creating value-added workplaces. It is seen in eastern Germany really everywhere: There, tennis courts and bike lanes will be built, yet for existing undertakings there is simply no money. We need to create promotions for value-added undertakings and workplaces; and that, the present as well as the previous Federal government have completely let slip.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, March 23, 2022, Ukraine and Neutrality

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/24, p. 1946.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Seldom has a government newly come into office so quickly and so fundamentally arrived on the ground of facts. If for all of us it was not about Germany, one could almost feel Schadenfreude, but that is not my aim here.

Here, a Green Economy Minister, whose goal is the end of the fossil energy economy, requests liquefied natural gas from Arab sheiks, and a Foreign Minister, who dreams of a feminist foreign policy, needs to think out for herself a new security architecture. And all are presided over by a head of government whose party just recently held armed drones to be incompatible with the German desire for peace.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in terms of security the government has learned quickly, and 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr is surely a learning success for politicians who have grown up in the fixed belief in a rules-based, multilateral foreign policy. Yet as always in cases of over-compensation, over-drive now threatens.

I know it is difficult in view of ruins, a war of aggression and millions of refugees to name one’s own failures; that is, the past failures of the West. Alone of so many: A great power should never be humiliated. Bismarck had therein erred in 1870-1871, the victors of the First World War in 1919 at Versailles, and the West, ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately after 1989. Since what we did was a humiliation of Russia. We have attempted to construct a world order without taking regard of this great power. This, ladies and gentlemen, means, despite all that has happened, despite this war of aggression, that a European order of peace is only possible with, though never against, Russia, Europe’s largest country.

It is the error of the Russian President to believe that greatness would come solely through the barrel of a gun, or today by means of atomic rockets. A country’s greatness and strength rest mostly on the acceptance of the state from within and from without, and that is the Russian President’s deficit.

The great Czars, to whom he readily refers, were reformers: Alexander I, the conqueror of Napoleon, and Alexander II, the liberator of the peasants. What should, what can we do to lead Russia back to this European way? We can intercede as an honest broker for a neutral Ukraine. That would be the future.

Ladies and gentlemen, so that I will not be falsely understood: Neutrality does not mean neutrality of thought and heart but a neutrality of deeds. Sanctions affecting the Russian people are wrong, like the delivery of offensive weapons which make nothing better but still much worse, or certainly combat operations like the blockade of the air space over the Ukraine. I am grateful to the Chancellor that he has quite clearly said that we are not a part of this war, this confrontation, and that we must remain so.

Ladies and gentlemen, neutrality in the presence of a threatening world war with atomic weapons is plainly not to be compared with a private individual’s failure to assist because the victim is not a member of a volunteer fire department, as Henryk Broder opined recently in the Welt. And no, dear Herr Döpfner, editor of the Welt, we as Germans deny nothing of history when we persevere in this neutrality and in peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know there was much criticism exercised of how we here conducted ourselves following the speech of the Ukrainian President; I do not want to call that up again. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian President also cannot want the freedom of the Ukraine to be erected on the rubble of Europe. In the atomic age, compromise is not appeasement but is the necessity of survival. Egon Bahr certainly knew that, dear Herr Mützenich. In the end, a neutral and de-militarized Ukraine will demand from all participants the acknowledgement whether death and destruction were really required so as to achieve this result, and the Federal government, dear Herr Scholz, will therein be measured on how vigorously it has interceded for such a solution.

It is one thing to have according to international law a theoretical right to membership in an alliance, and it is another in a order of states as it is now to assert one’s place with prudence. Spheres of influence do not disappear as a result of being denied and a rupture of all relations with Russia alters nothing of its situation, size and geopolitical influence. Therefore, here also pragmatic negotiations remain the highest precept.

I am grateful.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Christian Wirth, March 16, 2022, Living Standards and Saarland

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/20, pp. 1457-1458.

Frau President. Valued colleagues.

The motion of the CDU/CSU discloses for the first time that the Constitution’s postulate of equivalent living standards in the territory of the Federal Republic apparently was not attained – a late acknowledgment for a party which for many decades in government was responsible for the fate of Germany.

The best example is the commission for the creation of equivalent living standards of the 19^th legislative period. If it is seen how the new Federal States prior to the State legislative elections there were compensated on account of the closing down of brown coal mining – it may be granted by you – one becomes misty-eyed when this is compared with the closing down of anthracite coal mining in NRW and in my State of Saarland.

Yet with regard to the policy of the Merkel time in office and of the present Ampel coalition, you should perhaps rename the council as “council for equivalent poor living standards” or equally the “council for scarcity administration”. Since money for leveling up the living standards will not be on hand for the foreseeable future. “The World’s Dumbest Energy Policy”, as it was styled by the Wall Street Journal not too long ago, as well as the senseless lockdown policy, drag these States into a downward spiral and provide in wide areas for misery in the population and for business bankruptcies.

The crisis in the Ukraine alone shows how very dependent on foreign powers this country as become. An evil awakening in Neverland Germany: One needs only what one wants, then it will surely be.

A good start would be under the motion’s point 4, “the parliamentary accompaniment of European legislation in regards the objective of a more equivalent living standard” in Germany. If that means that German tax money will first be transferred to foreign countries when it is better in every region in Germany than in that of the payments recipients, then this would be welcomed.

A small example from Saarland in which, due to the energy policy, not only the auto and steel industries are being driven to the wall: In Croatia, it may be granted by you, has been built a 2.4 kilometer bridge between Split and Dubrovnik so as to avoid a 10 kilometer drive through Bosnia-Herzegovina – in itself surely dubious. The EU has financed this project to 85 percent, thus with some 300 million euros. By whom was this bridge built? You can well nigh guess: A Chinese state concern. Thereby wanders the 300 million euros of tax money from the EU directly into the Chinese state account. Why? Because your EU professionals are incapable of writing rational procurement regulations. The curvature of bananas and cucumbers are more important.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): What do you have against bananas?

Conversely, the Chinese naturally allow no international bidders in regards their orders from which German businesses could profit.

For the Saarland, that means the following case:

First. The Saarland taxpayer co-pays for the Chinese bridge construction.

Second. It is denied to the Saarland to deliver its highly valued quality steel.

Third. With their tax payments, the Saarlanders also subsidize the cheap, low value steel of China in Europe.

If the council would assist in preventing such imbecility, then we could vote in favor. Unfortunately, here we see black.

Since, think of the States’ financial equalization. By means of the States’ financial equalization, Bavaria in the beginning years of the Federal Republic greatly profited from the payments by other Federal States, and then later with Baden-Württemberg by complaining against the payments obligations vis-à-vis other Federal States. Besides, responsible were the politicians of parties which with one voice always declare to us that a financial equalization in the EU at the cost of the taxpayer may be a wonderful thing.

Many thanks und Glück auf!

           Marianne Schieder (SPD): Oje, oje!

 

[trans: tem]