German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/70,
pp. 8126-8127.
Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honorable citizens.
To begin with: It is just two weeks that we stand here and debate
the so-called Bürgergeld [citizens’
wage]. I was frankly amazed at this low point in the debate culture. Such abuses
with which you have dismissed the opposition’s objections do not belong here.
Yet this thin skin also shows: You had not reckoned with the
massive criticism which indeed did not come just from the associations and the
Federal Budget Authority but also from the bases of your parties. Just so is to
be explained the mitigation with which you under pressure are allowed to retire
from some of the grossest blunders.
Yet what still remains is unfortunately scarcely better.
There remains: The Bürgergeld is
contra-productive, it invites abuse and it is a slap in the face of those who
get up every morning to themselves work for their income. Worse still: It
drastically increases the danger that people land in long-term unemployment and
remain there. Who contests that has for long not spoken with the co-workers at
the job centers, and this in a time in which there is scarcely anything more
important than to put to work as many people as possible.
Dear colleagues, today however we speak on what all of this
costs and how it shall be financed. And
look: Where in the draft law 4.8 billion euros was still estimated for section
11 is now found only around 3 billion. You already need to finance heating
costs from the 60s and that in its first year of introduction. What comes
after? Do you then abolish the Bürgergeld
if the receipts disappear as is now foreseeable?
As you know, we stand at the beginning of a difficult
recession and a wave of business insolvencies. Many people will lose their
work. Inflation increases further and thereby also the cost of living. Who can
no longer support that may soon land in the social system. All of that in the
future needs to paid for. I step by step ask myself: Where from?
The Ampel governs
according to the motto: “Rule of Thumb – According to Cash on Hand” [„Pi mal Daumen – Nach Kassenlage“] and
with eyes closed hopes for the best. All of this recalls the basic pension.
There also an actually correct investment, namely the increase of means for the
socially needy, was ideologically overburdened and against all reason perverted
into its opposite.
And the basic pension was a prestige objective of Herr Heil.
Yet, so as to cite Herr Habeck, it is, ja,
“only money”. This quite metaphysical attitude explains with what grandiosity
the taxpayers’ money will be dealt with.
The Ampel already
in its first year of government made debts of around 550 billion euros. As if
that were not enough: In the shadows besides pile up around 28 creatively
entitled special funds for this and that and in a sum of billions – debts which
do not emerge in the Federal budget, which nevertheless need to be paid back by
our children and grandchildren – the latest being the Aktienrente [securities pensions]. It is fundamentally right to
reconsider a long-term expansion and the apportionment financing in the pension
insurance. Yet to do so as if the pension insurance could be made
demographically secure with an injection of 10 billion euros is ridiculous.
For comparison: The volume of the mandated pension insurance
already today amounts to around 330 billion euros per year, a third of which is
tax subsidies. Therein is measured the sum which is dealt with here – not a
drop on the hot stone. For an effect worthy of the name, a far higher
contribution as a strong expenditure thus needs be planned for, and in fact
yearly – if one then has the money. Instead, even the 10 billion euro injection
needs to be financed on credit. Herr Lindner thus ambles along in the
expectation that the yield on the capital investments in the long-term exceed
the costs which he, on account of rising interest rates, must pay for. That is
dangerous.
The alternative is on that account uncomfortable: Change
course and save what the thing contains. All expenditures need to be on the
test stand under the given: What is really necessary and sensible? What do we
need to secure the economic foundations of the country? From what need we take
leave?
Dear colleagues, nothing of this is recognized, nothing of
this is willed. That is a cause for concern, since it permanently damages our
country. Thus will further billions be sunk for ideological nonsense, while at
the other end money is lacking, for example, for the appropriate endowment of
hardship cases. That affects hundreds of thousands of pensioners in the east
who many times live in poverty because, as you know, a portion of their pension
was taken as a result of procedural failures in the transition in the West
German pension law.
The intended solution remains far behind the justified
expectations. Even your SPD colleague Dulig designates it as – cite – “a
political compromise to the smallest common denominator”. It is too little, it helps nothing, and it is
not appropriate to the people who so long await support. I therefore appeal to
you: Enlarge this common denominator! Do what is right! For other things, the
money is apparently there.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
