Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, November 22, 2022, Family Ministry and Lobbyists

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/68, p. 7940.

Herr President. Dear colleagues. Honorable citizens.

We stand at the beginning of a recession. While savings measures will be spoken of, the people called upon to save and millions of families are on the edge of despair, money for unnecessary prestige projects will be expended, lobby associations taken into consideration and spared for false purposes. The Family Ministry budget is exemplary of this. It sets false priorities and is thoroughly soaked in green ideology.

For false priorities, the “Language Day Care” program – cost factor: 250 million euros per year – is the best example. This program is the life’s blood of many day cares. Over 7,000 professionals are thereby financed nationwide so as to promote the language development of the children. The latest studies indicate to us how important this is, whereby early childhood language education fell to an unheard level thanks to the Corona preventive measures.

And what do you do as nearly the first official act? In the Family Ministry this program was eliminated. Following a great wave of protest, the Ministry now comes about and yet again 109 million euros is posited for use in the interval – that is, until June 2023 – money which otherwise was erroneously provided with a stop notation.

Two billion euros were grandiosely announced for the new Good Day Care Law which is now called the “Day Care Quality Law”. That however is a potent smoke screen. There has of course flowed just zero cents more so far by means of this Good Day Care Law.

Where you cut, once again completely lacking transparency, is for example in the investment programs for the child care financing. In the years 2020 and 2021, there was still foreseen one billion euros. Were thus a balance sum for the day care promotion reckoned, the account would appear as follows: Minus 230 million euros for the Federal programs, inclusive of the language day care, minus 500 million euros for the investment programs. For 2023, that makes a minus of 750 million euros which is omitted nationwide. That is inconceivable for a Family Minister.

Yet you plainly set your priorities differently; since, ja, there must be money for your lobbyist colleagues and for the green ideology agenda of your ministry. For the so-called measures for strengthening variety and tolerance, 200 million euros are again foreseen. That thereby organizations with a direct connection in the Moslem Brotherhood will also be promoted – all the same.

For your lobbyist colleagues there is an abundance of money. That is best seen in regards the anti-discrimination commissioner, Frau Ataman.

            Leni Breymaier (SPD): Good woman!

Her office, completely detached from any responsibility, next year receives 13.4 million euros. That is fully 250 percent more than in 2021. So as to raise the money for that moreover, the women’s homes were cut.

            Denise Loop (Greens): That is not right!

If I may then continue in the list: There are again 10 million euros for the political party youth organizations. In clear text: A gift of the taxpayers to the political organizations like Grüne Jugend, Jusos, Linkes Jugend and Co.. 10 million euros for welfare associations for the “Counseling of Refugees”. I can here will imagine that soon with this next motion, the citizens’ money is imparted for “counseling” – and, and, and.

The crowning of the whole was nevertheless seriously the coalition’s motion in the settlement sitting of two weeks ago. Without shame, you have actually explicitly given money to specified firms. There were the yearly payment to the PHINEO AG of 350,000 euros or the 1.34 million euros for LGBTQ projects – the most of which, 850,000 euros, explicitly for Pinkdot.

Normally, duties and goals for a ministry’s budget are defined, then money placed at disposal and the attendant guidelines written out, to which the firms can then apply. Yet it is thus very burdensome and costly. It is just much more convenient to name an actual firm and to write it in the budget.

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Unbelievable!

The entire bureaucracy thus saves. It is only about a trifling 1.2 million euros. Who should be troubled by that? That is cronyism par excellence.

While the people will be called upon to save, while debts are made as if there was no tomorrow, here without shame money will be distributed to lobbyist associations. That is impudent. And it is incomprehensible why the FDP participates in all this nonsense.

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): I well understand it: Lust for positions.

 We of the AfD in any case will not share in this title and this budget – not as long as ideology and lobbyism are placed above the needs of the families in this country.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marc Jongen, November 30, 2022, Ukrainian History

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/72, pp. 8421-8422.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The Holodomor – Ukrainian for “mass murder by starvation” – is one of the 20^th Century’s greatest crimes against humanity. Lenin in 1922 had already announced it: We will even use terror, including economic terror. – Which Stalin then executed in incomprehensible brutality. The forcibly collectivized Kulaks, those independent farmers hated by the Communists, were in 1932-33 throughout the Soviet Union obligated to unfulfillable deliveries. He who did not submit, armed commandos took away from him the entire harvest and all food stores. The Ukraine, as the granary of Europe, was especially hard hit because there Stalin wanted to eliminate national consciousness. The country was blockaded, rail traffic was no longer allowed. Up to four million people were given up to certain death by starvation.  

When we today remember these monstrous crimes, then there needs be primarily one lesson: The socialist ideology with its hatred of individuality and freedom, with its levelling terror and its madness of being able to create a new man, is to be rejected and fought wherever in new guise it raises its hideous head. That pertains to the national socialist variant, yet also plainly pertains to the international variant which hides behind fine sounding words like “justice” and “progress”.  

The AfD delegation briefed on the Holodomor here in the German Bundestag already three years ago. At that time, scarcely anyone was interested. In regards to crimes in communist spheres of power, our left-leaning political establishment has for decades preferred to look away. Certainly the remembrance of the crimes of the SED does not come forward fittingly; the monument is still not built. The leader engaged for the Hohenschönhaus memorial was elegantly gotten rid of, etc.

Why now is remembrance of the Holodomor so important to these same political forces? We fear, for crooked reasons. In your speeches here and in other announcements occur a strong parallelization and identification [Ineinssetzung] of the historical event with the present war of Russia against the Ukraine. The Heidelberg historian Tanya Penter speaks in Spiegel quite correctly of an “unfortunate interweaving of separate historical contexts” in your motion [Drucksache 20/4681] and the genocide researcher Kristin Platt warned in Deutschlandfunk Kultur: One must deal very carefully with the term genocide or Völkermord; for certainly in a war it will be frequently used strategically and also as propaganda. Besides, Vladimir Putin has cited the Ukraine for the Völkermord of Russians in the eastern provinces. We here in the West should not mirror the immoderation of such accusations, ladies and gentlemen.

Yet German politics as usual is intoxicated to exaltation in its moralizing superiority. Foreign Minister Baerbock now even speaks in regards Russia’s conduct of the war, which so far according to UN statistics has claimed around 6,500 civilian victims, of a break with civilization. – An expression which otherwise has been reserved for the Holocaust. Frau Baerbock – wherever she is today – certainly demonstrates a wise statesmanship in a crisis not in maximum rhetorical escalation but with measure and circumspection [Maß und Umsicht] in regards the peace which she should keep in view. She is strikingly lacking in both.

In conclusion, I want to correct one error of yours: The Ukrainians who now with weapons in hand and perhaps with the memory of the Holodomor in heart defend their homeland do not do it for the values of the international rainbow, for diversity, tolerance and equalization. They do it for the sovereignty of their country, for the preservation of their people and of their culture. They therein have our solidarity. The Holodomor is to be remembered,

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr colleague, your speaking time is                        at an end.

but the instrumentalization of history which you are pushing, we reject.

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): For you, nothing is too harmful!

Many thanks.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): For you, nothing is too harmful! Respect –                                    not a chance!

 

[trans: tem]

 

Marc Bernhard, December 1, 2022, Home Ownership

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/73, pp. 8602-8603.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

In Germany, 75 percent of renters dream of their own four walls. Yet only the fewest have succeeded in also realizing this dream; since, according to the ECB, the Germans are the poorest in the euro zone. Thus, the assets of an average Greek family are double as high as that of a German family, in Spain and Italy even four times as high as with us. And in regards the pension level, Germany with just 48 percent is far behind. Spain, for example, has 83 percent, Austria 89 percent and Italy even 91 percent.

We have the world’s highest energy prices, and we have with just 45 percent the lowest rate of home ownership in the EU. Here in Berlin it is even just 15 percent, while in France 64 percent, in Italy 72 percent, in Greece 76 percent, in Czechia 80 percent and in Slovakia even 92 percent live within their own four walls. The European cut thus lies over 70 percent. We thus have not only the highest energy prices, the smallest household assets with the lowest pension level, but also the lowest home ownership rate in the EU.

Now the inflation also devours the rest of the citizens savings. It is therefore now certainly much more important to bring as many people as possible within their own four walls. Since this is the best inflation protection, the best safeguard for elders, and provides in crises like today’s stability and security to people. And therefore we want to make Germany from a land of renters into a land of homeowners.

Yet then why is Germany at all the taillight in the EU’s home ownership rate? The German Bundesbank states in a study that for one thing it lies, in international comparison, in the much too high real property sales taxes [Grunderwerbsteuer]; and for another, that the mortgage interest, unlike as in many other countries, cannot be deducted even for the self-use dwelling. Yet that was once in Germany otherwise, as in the administration of Helmut Kohl, – it is already quite a while – the costs for one’s own home could be deducted from taxes. That then made home ownership possible, despite astronomical rates well over 10 percent.  

We demand in our motion [Drucksache 20/3204] that the real property sales tax be lowered to 3.5 percent throughout Germany, and before all, that the purchase of one’s own first home must be completely free of taxes. That would of course finally eliminate the social injustice that large capital companies pay practically no real property sales tax, while the normal citizen always needs to pay for everything.

In addition, the prices for home ownership need again to become affordable. For that, the construction guidelines and the cost-driving climate guidelines are to be reduced, the contract procedures accelerated and the rural area finally again made more attractive. Since while in the urban centers 2 million affordable dwellings are lacking, 1.7 million dwellings in rural areas stand empty.  

Let us finally do it like our European neighbors and as the German Bundesbank recommends: With one’s own four walls, we attain for the people inflation protection, an old age safeguard, stability and security. Let us finally make Germany from a country of renters into a country of owners! 

 

[trans: tem]