Michael Espendiller, November 23, 2022, Foreign Minister Baerbock

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/69, pp. 8058-8059.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall                        and on YouTube.

For 2023, the Foreign Office may rejoice over 7.5 billion euros for expenditures. The Ampel is thus really busting out and others here in the hall applaud. Only we say: It is too much, and before all in regards to the fascinating questions: What actually happens with the money? To where does it flow and does it do what it should? In the coalition contract, the Ampel parties are understood to have a “result-oriented budget management” [„wirkungsorientierte Haushaltsführung“]. Yet we have seen very little of that. When the budget title somehow sounds good and “climate“ or “sustainability“ are therein, then the billions fly out the window to foreign countries.

Let us for once be definite – we have already spoken of it in the deliberations. There is the so-called Federal Office for Foreign Affairs. That is a chic, new authority in the portfolio of the Foreign Office in beautiful Brandenburg on the Havel, and there work any number of motivated experts. We could once inspect it together with the Minister and it was really very interesting. One of the department leaders explained to us that in his department in this year 62 co-workers were at work on 1,900 projects, projects in 130 countries of the world with a value equivalent to 2 billion euros.  

If we reckon that up, we see: Every single expert is responsible for worldwide projects of a total value of 32.3 million euros – one co-worker, 32 million euros. Here, we naturally asked: How can a single expert comprehend and examine such a large sum, whether the money really matters and effects something? The answer ran: It will be kursorisch [cursorily] examined. We take a peek in Duden, which says:

Kursorisch: …continuous, quickly proceeding from one to another, not exacting                            in details…

Simply stated: When you  propose money for a project, it will be briefly examined, stamped; the money will be allotted, afterwards a brief report written – “all was super fine” – done, into the files. – Following our criticism, the Minister amplified that the Foreign Office’s projects were pre-tested, primarily however by the project partners. Nevertheless, Frau Baerbock also said – cite: “We do not control each, single invoice. We do not control each, single bill. We simply cannot do that”. End citation.

Look, precisely there lies the snag; since it is by no means that you cannot control each, single bill but that you simply do not want to. The funding sections [Förderabteilungen] of the Foreign Office see to the expending of money. Were it important to you, Frau Minister – wherever in fact you are – you would reconstruct the section; you would expend no money without controls. Yet you do precisely the opposite.

And in which countries then will the money generally be expended? For example, yesterday you approved an additional 33 million euros for the Republic of Moldavia, for the most part in the area of energy security. A glance at the corruption index of Transparency International shows no good picture for this country. There, the Republic of Moldavia lands in place 105, the same as Panama, and thereby is at the fore in matters of corruption, even though still slightly behind the Ukraine.  

I think, Frau Hagedorn, many people can thoroughly comprehend the government’s disposition to help that country.

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Frau Hagedorn has much more an idea than you!

The country is heavily affected by the war. Yet certainly in regards to the corruption, it should nevertheless be an especial concern for you to here enforce an ordinary control – a control whereby the money really produces something. Yet you simply do not do it, and you also will not do it merely because you say that here. Trust is good, control is better. In case someone here now says, “Yes, man, for that we have the Federal Audit Authority“ – that is a mistake. It of course controls no projects. It simply does not have the capacities for that.

How thus precisely the taxpayers‘ money will be dealt with is thus a switching point which you need to take in hand., Frau Minister. Yet you and your house control, ja, not any single invoice and not any single bill.

Yet do you know who needs to do that? The taxpayers in Germany who generate the money that you grandiosely distribute. The citizens need to precisely watch every euro; since normal people can expend the money only once. The citizens also need to preserve every, single invoice; for their tax statement, for example. If you conduct a business in Germany, you even need to do that for ten years. If then one fine day the tax audit arrives – it arrives as surely as the amen in church – then will the tax examiner inspect every, single bill and every, single invoice. May God have mercy on you if then something is thereby not right. Thus when you so lightly speak of that, that you simply cannot so precisely examine all of that, then you thereby reject for yourself a standard which is an obligation for millions of Germans. – Frau Minister, no head shaking helps here. This is just a fact.

Aside from distinctive foreign policy concepts, we here demand from you more effective controls. For that, you are more than obliged to the taxpayers in this country.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

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]