Götz Frömming, November 24, 2022, Budget: Education and Research

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/70, pp. 8273-8274.

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

When the speeches, Frau Minister, of you and the colleagues of the Ampel coalition are listened to, then it almost needs be thought that all is for the best in the education and research nation of Germany. Ladies and gentlemen, that is by no means the case. Nothing is good in the education and research nation of Germany. The opposite is the case.

Frau Minister, even if you act here as if your Ministry was one of importance and your colleagues also thus emphasize it: You need only take a peek at the time up there to see how high the status of your Ministry actually is in this Federal government.

            Kerstin Radomski (CDU/CSU): Yes, that’s true!

We debate education and research following agriculture and shortly before closing time, ladies and gentlemen. On such a day here, it actually needed to be in the first place – you need not act thus. You are the masters of the daily order.

            Kai Gehring (Greens): We just wonder how early you make closing time!

And which says something of where the several departments are to be ordered.

It is also not right that there has been an increase. On balance, it is the more so – and the Federal Audit Authority has calculated this for you – that the budget even shrinks if the inflation rate is considered.

Yet that alone is only half the truth; since in fact there is an area where we see an enormous increase, not only with you but also with your predecessor in the last legislative period, and indeed in the area of co-workers. The number of co-workers in the BMBF alone rose 24 percent in the last legislative period.

            Kai Gehring (Greens): That is false! They have also let women go!

That was besides twice as many as in the other ministries. It comes to still more in the additional years. Meanwhile, we have 1,414 co-workers in the Ministry for Education and Research.

            Kai Gehring (Greens): Acknowledge that co-workers were also let go!

Ladies and gentlemen, one may well ask: What do these co-workers do all day long?

            Kai Gehring (Greens): More than you!

Germany actually needs to be at the top in regards education and research – we unfortunately are not; the opposite is the case. Meanwhile, we lose not only at football but also in other areas. For example: In regards patents, the other nations march past us.

This morning we heard how bad the reality seems: Your 1,400 co-workers are alone not in a position to set up an on-line platform on which the students can order a one-time, heating cost subsidy of 200 euros. Here, you now call for help at one of the new Federal states. I find that to be embarrassing, ladies and gentlemen.           

Recently a couple of reasonable projects from the FDP were paid for; yet there are also others in this budget. We finance – actually you finance it, since we don’t want it – GiB, “A Look at Gender Aspects”. We finance “Schools without Homophobia”.

            Nina Stahr (Greens): Good!

            Wiebke Esdar (SPD): Correct!

We finance IfiF, “Innovative Frauen in Focus”.

            Nina Stahr (Greens): Also good!

We finance – or you –  in the millions a program for female professors. A Girls’ Day is financed, “Education for Sustainable Development”, etc., etc. Ladies and gentlemen, this budget thus excels only in ideology. Instead of performance and talent, you put in the first place gender and origin. Nothing can thus keep up with a world’s best education, ladies and gentlemen.

This budget needs to be completely cleaned out. We had hoped that you might bring a fresh wind into the Ministry. Unfortunately, like your predecessor, only a light puff blows. In truth, the Greens stamp this Ministry with their mark and that is the principal problem.

On the other side, money is lacking where it actually needs to be committed. For artificial intelligence, for example, a petty 50 million euros. In the area of nuclear energy research you have foreseen nothing at all. The Greens do not allow you even that. I know that you yourselves would see or do it otherwise; yet also here, Germany walks a Sonderweg. That is not good for our future. Education and research need again to be in the first place. With the Greens at your side, you cannot do it, Frau Minister.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, November 24, 2022, Budget: Labor and Social

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]

 

René Springer, November 10, 2022, International Rights

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 60/66, pp. 7696-7697.

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Mention was already made of the ratification of the 2008 facultative protocols – it is already some time here – for the international pact on economic, social and cultural rights.

I am irritated that the two preceding speakers have made reference to Qatar. Human rights in Qatar are nevertheless not so protected that we here today are to ratify this treaty.

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): I spoke of Germany!

That lies in the hands of Qatar. And Qatar has not ratified this treaty. I would wish that you not tell such nonsense to those who are watching. That is completely misleading.

What shall this facultative protocol make possible? A grievance procedure will be contrived for individuals and groups which, subsequent to the exhaustion of national state legal means, will have the opportunity to lodge a grievance at a UN committee if they feel themselves violated in their rights. Individual persons and groups? What are groups? NGOs, that is nevertheless clear. Here is an NGO law. Here, it is about that once again will be created for NGOs the possibility by means of international organizations to execute an attack upon the national states. That is the actual aim. – At least you applaud honestly.

We of the Alternative für Deutschland always put forward two questions: A law has which uses, and which risks proceed from a law? What are uses of this? In a two-fold sense: None. The rights dealt with here which have been defined in the 1973 international pact on economic, social and cultural rights – which was ratified – are guaranteed and protected in Germany. No one here present would assert that these rights are stepped on in Germany.  

            Kai Whittaker (CDU/CSU): Yet you assert it every day!

Thus we therefore do not need this law. Beyond that, it is a duty of the lawmaker to adjust to where a need for regulation exists. And we are the lawmakers and not some international organization distant from our states.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): That is so!

Beyond that, risks proceed from this law if we ratify it. What will happen is that NGOs will make Germany laughable before the United Nations where, for example, limitations of rights are made a theme in the sense that they are certainly not limitations of rights if it is meant seriously. I even see already some sort of crazy gender association which then brings complaint before the United Nations that here there are no toilets for the fourth gender.

            Manuel Gava (SPD): That is precisely the aim!

That is nevertheless to where this law leads. We do not want precisely that. We do not want that a UN committee decides over what is here law and statute.

            Stephan Stracke (CDU/CSU): That is just not right!

You say: What is happening here is not legally binding, it is only soft law. – Yet the fact nevertheless is that soft law very quickly becomes hard law,

            Stephan Stracke (CDU/CSU): Now he’s on “soft law”. It’s just nonsense!

by which of course national courts in regards their decisions draw upon that decision of the next higher level for an interpretation.

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion.

Thereby is national law nevertheless again at an end

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): That is pitiful!

and that we reject.     

We reject the left-green Agenda which pursues just one goal:

Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion.

To soften up the national state and democracy for an attack by international organizations.

I am grateful for the attention.

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Good night!

 

 

[trans: tem]