Jörn König, April 27, 2022, Digitalization and Taxation

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/30, pp. 2686-2687.

Right honorable Frau President. Dear spectators.

The CDU/CSU with a motion wants to make transparent the digitalization costs of tax law proposals.

            Sebastian Brehm (CDU/CSU): Correct!

We share this goal.

            Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): Very good!

We find however that the Union cannot credibly represent these concerns.

            Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): Why?

The motion is a historical digression on the partially failed introduction of tax software in the financial administration, beginning in the year 1991, thus prior to KONSENS; called namely FISCUS. Since then, the Union has governed 24 years. At the latest after the Machtübernahme [taking power] in the year 2005

            Antje Tillmann (CDU/CSU): “Machtübernahme” is not at all the right term!

            Sebastian Brehm (CDU/CSU): Verantwortungsübernahme [taking                                            responsibility]!

– after taking charge of the government in the year 2005, you the Union would have been able, and needed to, implement this goal of the motion. This motion, a few months after the change of the government, actually shows your failure as a government.  

Ladies and gentlemen of the Union, you have with your greatest Chancellor of all time in the years 2010, 2012 and 2017 declared digitalization to be a top priority. Yet in the entire 16 years, you forgot to cast into law this relatively simple digitalization motion. On that account, we can all of us still well recall that many Union members had sufficient time for, as an example, lucrative mask deals.

Thus why should the governing delegations actually do you the favor of now implementing your motion? Do you understand the new government as a repair operation for neglected duties?

The motion quite well describes the origin of the failures and eternal delays in the IT implementation.There are – I cite: “Constantly new legal and political requirements”. In fact, the legislation ever again ever more rapidly changes. Meanwhile, there are monthly – earlier, it was yearly – articles in the newspapers; here is one from 2022:

            [The speaker holds up a paper]

Pension Taxation Changes. – And here, it changes in October. – This is for the normal citizen just simply bewildering.

We here in parliament, and especially the present governing delegations, attend to these failures with ever new laws – it can be safely said, with a regulation mania. The constant changes in the tax law are simply harmful. The Union’s motion is in this connection also simply just muddling along with eyes on the road. What we need would be a long-term concept for the digitalization of our administration and tax collection – simple, slim, free of bureaucracy and secure for the future. In regards the citizens, trust, mutuality, transparency and durability are more imperative than ever.

The question thus is: How is it made better? The AfD in this regard has laid on the table the right proposal on the basis of the Kirchhof model. With this model, you, dear Union, campaigned in the year 2005; unfortunately, you afterwards quite opportunistically chased Professor Kirchhof off the Hof – once again, a broken election promise; for you, it is, ja, a routine.

With the AfD model, the complexity and thereby the lack of transparency would have been eliminated in the tax law. It is ever still more ridiculous to assert that 80 percent of the tax literature comes from Germany. It is in reality only 15 percent. Yet that too is an expression of over-bureaucratization; since we have only 2 percent of all taxpayers worldwide.

The goal must be that the average taxpayer once again understands his tax statement. This must be united with a distinct relief of the middle class. If you want to make the tax collection modern and contemporary, then implement our motion, Drucksache 19/25305, which enlists for a tax collection pilot project with Distributed Ledger technologies.

            Jens Zimmermann (SPD): Oh!

You will ask, What is Distributed Ledger?

            Jens Zimmermann (SPD): No, we know.

            Johannes Steiniger (CDU/CSU): We know.

            Anke Domscheit-Berg (Linke): That is [****]. Almost always!

It is what your commissioner calls “blockchange” when he means blockchain.

Right honorable parliamentary colleagues, take the motion as an occasion to reduce taxes and radically simplify the tax law on the basis of the AfD proposal. Then the motion also has its good. We will abstain.

            Matthias Hauer (CDU/CSU): Since it’s not so bad when you abstain!

Many thanks for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beatrix von Storch, April 27, 2022, Abortion Advertisement

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/30, pp. 2691-2692.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

With sunglasses, disco music and bobbing heads, celebrating in joyful anticipation the abolition of the ban on advertisement for abortion – §219a of the penal code: We all have seen the video of shame of FDP colleague Lütke and the freely turning democrats.

Freedom for the FDP – before all, for the young colleagues – is freedom from values, from ties and from responsibility. No wonder that the FDP Justice Minister Buschmann now manages the abolition of the advertising ban. Yet he spoke a falsehood: That §219a must go because of a lack of information on abortion doctors is objectively false.

The counseling offices for the legally prescribed pregnancy conflict consultations are the places where women are counseled and receive information. The board of abortion doctors maintains a list with 74 pages, last updated on April 5, 2022, to be found with three clicks via Google.

And you make vapid the entire debate by the willful mingling of information and advertisement. Information is sought, advertisement is offered. Who ascertains the possibilities of an abortion receives information about which he inquires. If the doctor offers abortions on his website, that is advertising. And even that is according to current law no longer forbidden. Information is thus by no means lacking. Robin Alexander of the Welt is right. He says: This reason is only pretended.

As to the Ampel, it’s about something quite different. Thanks to colleague Jessica Rosenthal of the SPD, I cite:           

            It is time that #219a is finally history. Yet it is also clear #218 must follow.

It is thus about salami tactics, detail steps – yet the direction is clear. The Ampel does not want to restrict but to do away with the dignity and the right to life of unborn children. No ban on abortion advertisement, then no consultation obligation and then in conclusion no more Fristenlösung [loosening abortion ban during first three months]. A moral tabula rasa, abortion up to the ninth month as demanded by the Jusos.

Leni Breymaier (SPD): That is dumb nonsense!

The Basic Law alone stands in the way of this moral dam break – and the Federal Constitutional Court. The Federal Constitutional Court says:

Where human life exists, to it belongs human dignity. To human life also                 belongs the unborn life.

And further the Constitutional Court:

The right to life of the unborn is the elementary and inalienable right                        which proceeds from the dignity of human beings.

Thus is abortion always a wrong [Unrecht] and remains so. Only under narrowly specified conditions is it held to be non-culpable. That is the core of our motion [Drucksache 20/1505]: The consultation as a prerequisite for the non-culpability of an abortion must ensue with the aim of defending the unborn life.

Does it do that? Or is it decaying into a formality without the conviction that it is about the decision of life and death? The contract of the Ampel coalition foresees a commission which shall unwind [abwickeln] the existing abortion law. That is irreconcilable with the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court and counter to the Basic Law.

            Leni Breymaier (SPD): That is not at all right!

Our motion wants to implement the guidelines of the Federal Constitutional Court’s decision. It holds: There is a lack of information – yet not concerning abortion or abortion doctors, but concerning the dignity of unborn life and the right of the unborn to be born. The Federal Constitutional Court clearly said: The state is obligated to uphold and animate in common consciousness the unborn life’s legal claim to protection [Der Staat ist verpflichtet, den rechtlichen Schutzanspruch des ungeborenen Lebens im allgemeinen Bewusstsein zu halten und zu beleben.] 

There was an attempt to fulfill this order. Federal Family Minister Rita Süssmuth – long ago – published this brochure: “The Life Before Birth”. Thus, not the clump before birth, but the life before birth.

In 1974, Willy Brandt left the hall prior to the vote on the Fristenlösung. Willy Brandt was opposed to abortion because he was a child born out of wedlock and because he knew: Had his mother thought like you today think, Willy Brandt would not have been born.

Many thanks.

            Tanja Machalet (SPD): Shame on you!

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is a shamelessness!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Boehringer, April 27, 2022, Bundeswehr Special Fund

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 30/27, p. 2669.

Frau President.

We deliberate today on a ticklish draft law which indeed in its material aspect – loosening the very long-term investment status of the Bundeswehr – is worthy of welcome – we support this aim – yet which in terms of fiscal and constitutional legality is dubious.

To begin with: We are fundamentally opposed to special funds because they impair the Bundestag’s regularly transparent decision-making over the budget.

            Wolfgang Hellmich (SPD): Nonsense!

And now even a hedge [Absicherung] on an amendment of the Basic Law – without precedent! This special fund thus will stand not only – cite, the Finance Minister – “in addition to the debt brake”, but in the last instance in addition to the budget.

The Constitution is misused when a concrete budget figure is written into the Basic Law, and thus without an emergency is established an illegitimate accessory budget. Something like this is not done, in complete disregard to the goal of the orderly armament of the Bundeswehr, which the AfD quite alone for years demands.

Of all things, a leftist government wants to do something here which we last saw 130 years ago: Under Bismarck, the military budget was written out for years, the so-called seven year system. Of all things, the Ampel wants in a similar way to restrict the democratic control.

            Wolfgang Hellmich (SPD): Also false!

I do not say “abolish”, I say “restrict”.

The 100 billion of Bundeswehr means is regularly due to be put into the core budget without introduction of a special fund. And yet there simply is no question: The majority for this investment, as we demand for years, would be secured here in house without a problem. For that, there was for years an 80 percent majority and agreement here in house; it required no amendment of the Basic Law.

So let us be honest: This construction serves exclusively for the avoidance of the debt brake. The special fund even receives its own borrowing potential, without fixed terms of amortization – in cases, not yet – and without a charge on the constitutional debt limit. Its only about that; for that was this construction selected.

Since 2020, the government ever again as an exception sets aside the debt brake and alienates the means. This is permanent law-breaking which however anyway disturbs no one other than the AfD.

And again today an alienation of means is laid out; since this is allowed according to the draft law by the name of “Bundeswehr Special Fund Act”; unfortunately, not only for the benefit of the Bundeswehr, but it will also be expended  for the armament of not closely defined partner states, §2. All of this is superfluous and non-transparent. Increasingly, the core budget reflects only a part of the reality.

The socialists and redistributionists here in house will welcome this; since naturally it is much more simple to govern with hidden and out-sourced debts. You already do this with the climate fund, with the ESM and the EU debts programs. Yet this is fatal for a higher inflation on account of the causal chain of more ECB debt monetization; we already have an asozial 7 percent increase of expenses.

The weapons then at the earliest in summer – at the earliest, rather in autumn or next year or the year after next – which will be financed from the special fund will not influence the outcome of the Ukraine war. The Ukraine war in fact serves as an occasion for a course change in regards the equipment of the Bundeswehr, neglected for years; the necessity for that is nonetheless of long-standing and is no consequence of the Ukraine war, not at all.  

Who asserts something other and yet plainly makes a case for Ukraine – and that has, ja, plainly already amply happened here – is not only fiscally false. Frau Minister Lambrecht and Herr Dobrindt, according to press reports, you have agreed on the delivery of heavy weapons; all of that goes quite without a special fund. It went without a special fund. Not only are you wrong in fiscal terms, but then you shall also declare the renunciation of a decades-old German state doctrine to deliver no weapons to a war zone. Yet that would then be for Germany not only a fiscally false but at the same time a highly dangerous way.  

Hearty thanks.

            Wolfgang Hellmich (SPD): No idea and a lot of it!

 

[trans: tem]

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tino Chrupalla, April 28, 2022, Ukraine and Weapons

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/31, pp. 2725-2726.

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

It has been over two months now since Russia attacked the Ukraine. We again have war in Europe. At the beginning, all of us here in this sovereign house hoped the conflict quickly ended, and that the population in the Ukraine can again live in peace. Unfortunately, it is otherwise. The AfD delegation remembers all the war dead and mourns with their bereaved.

The new war in Europe places before us a difficult situation and decision. Suddenly, old wounds are opened up and overcome thought patterns are employed. Yet certainly for a peaceful living together, we need to remove the ideological blinkers and we ourselves discuss in our own country. I find it to be inexcusable that Chancellor Olaf Scholz today is not present on so important a day. For long he stood by his word that weapons are no solution. Today the coalition and the Union bring in common a motion which will prolong the Ukraine war and could make us a warring party to a nuclear war.

Valued colleagues, we are contending over the future of Germany. It is about war and peace and Mitteleuropa, and Herr Scholz travels to the cherry blossoms in Japan. And, no: Even travel plans can be changed. Remember: The Chancellor let Foreign Minister Baerbock return early to Berlin so as to vote on the vaccination mandate. Therein is shown where lie the priorities of this Chancellor.  

All who always speak of having learned from history are today the first who want to actively draw us into a war. Precisely that is signified by this motion put forward today. It reads like a statement of application to a war.

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): Mein Gott!

Its character recalls the darkest of times.

I need once more clearly say: We are not at war with Russia or any other country and the great majority of the German population do not want to participate in this war.

On that account, it must be asked: What purpose do you pursue? The Ukraine does not belong to NATO, and not the EU, and is just so a sovereign state in Europe as is Russia. It is in the German interest, and in the future for both states, to maintain a good relation, political, economic and cultural.

Surely with the Federal government’s decision to deliver Gepard panzers to the Ukraine was Germany’s position decisively weakened, since we can no longer appear as a neutral mediator. We can actually only hope that this proceeding has not conclusively blocked the diplomatic path. You intervene with weapons deliveries in a foreign war and call that a “values-guided foreign policy”. Have you actually asked yourselves what effect this decision has on our partners China and India? We need an interest-guided foreign policy for Germany and Europe.

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): We need values!

The Bundestag delegation of the Alternative für Deutschland quite definitely speaks out against the delivery of weapons to the Ukraine. Weapons have never shortened a war and are not humanitarian aid.

            Johannes Vogel (FDP): Ahistoric! Ahistorical [****].

We need to continue our humanitarian aid. By that I mean the support of war refugees as well as the assistance for those locally suffering from the emergency; for example, the delivery of medical assistance, of medicines, as well as the preparation of clean water and energy.

Many here in the plenary hall, and certainly also in the media, need to finally disarm rhetorically. The peace rhetoric needs to step into the foreground, not the war rhetoric.

Valued colleagues, please come to reason. Allow your consciences to decide and vote against the delivery of weapons to the Ukraine! The Alternative für Deutschland

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Please come to a conclusion.

is the only delegation in the German Bundestag that stands for peace on the continent of Europe.

Many thanks.

            Joe Weingarten (SPD): What idiocy!

            Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP): To Moscow with love!

 

[trans: tem]