Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, February 1, 2024, Scholz Government and Pensions

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/151, pp. 19276-19277. 

Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honored citizens. 

Germany is being passed down [Deutschland wird nach unten durchgereicht]: The economy shrinks, the bankruptcy wave rolls, and achievers in droves leave the country. The infrastructure collapses, the healthcare system is exhausted – to say nothing of the education system. 

That is the balance of a government which, quite alone, wants to save the world and the climate, and, for that and quite without necessity, destroys the foundations of existence of an industrial nation, which pumps billions into Bürgergeld, yet leaves nothing over for the employees, which sinks untold sums for ideological nonsense and, for that, is ready to squeeze the people to the last cent. 

How can that be? “Champagne for all!”, that was the Ampel’s deal: Children’s basic security for the SPD, climate fuss for the Greens, and “no tax increases” for the FDP. It could have been so nice. Instead, last year came the reckoning: Everything which the Ampel, it needs be said, has tricked together – none of it was constitutional. And even the budget, of which we here today speak, stands on shaky footing. 

Now, at the latest, it would be to announce a change of course, to say nothing of saving. Saving: That means – for those who do not know – to spend less money there where it need not be, so as to have it where it will be needed. 

            Takis Mehmet Ali (SPD): Yes, where then?

You unfortunately do the opposite. You raise the taxes on CO₂ and benzine, you raise the trucking fee, and you raise the taxes for the restaurant trade. 

            Takis Mehmet Ali (SPD): Yet you just said we should save!

You take the farmers hostage and beyond that demand still higher taxes for meat. Then it is only for the rich. What a glorious idea! 

And what you promised as a relief for the citizens – construction help, heating help, climate money – that slips away. There never was the money for that. 

Yet – und das ist gut so – the citizens begin to understand. The money is certainly not gone, it is just elsewhere. Suddenly, there is talk in the streets of bike paths in Peru, of gender projects in Colombia, of development aid for China. We pay for the pensions for other EU countries – countries in which the per capita assets are far above ours. 

Before all, however, we pay untold sums for a failed energy transition which massively overcharges the budget and our social accounts, and which will burden us for generations. 

Perhaps look for once at the studies from Holland and Denmark, or at least what Herr Raffelhüschen has written. 

            Claudia Raffelhüschen (FDP): Oah!

The results are unequivocal: The costs of migration are ruining our social state. What follows from that is clear: Still more rapidly rising contributions for pensions, health and care – and still fewer benefits for those who are to provide for all of this with their work. That is the new reality in Germany: As it happens, for those who finance the whole thing with their tax money, there remains scarcely anything. This is unique in Europe. 

            Martin Rosemann (SPD): All dumb stuff!

This is the reason why in Germany no normal earner can still afford a house, or in old age, the  care home. 

You can, Minister Heil, still so often emphasize, “Work makes the difference” – the people know better. That ultimately is also an origin of the rising costs in Bürgergeld. 

It is directly therefore an original sin that the Ampel in its greed wants to further avail itself of the employees’ money. 

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): That is just nonsense, what you are telling here!

With threadbare reasoning, you already had the finger in the till of the Federal Agency for Labor. That, after the last hearing, Gott sei dank, you have no longer dared – not nearly from insight, but alone out of fear of the next constitutional slap. 

Instead, you continue to plunder the statutory pensions, those additional allowances guaranteed by statute which you cut without further ado up to 2027 by a total of around 6.8 billion euros. 

For your next great project, the equities pension [Akteinrente], in which you are so proud, here are a couple of numbers: When, for that, you borrow 12 billion euros as a one-time credit and stick it in a fund, when do you think you would you at least restore the eliminated 6.8 billion euros? In the year 2050. And when you each year borrow 12 billion on credit and continually deposit it in a fund, the 6.8 billion is in back there until the year 2032 – besides the payments of up to 108 billion. 

Unfortunately, that does not at all help the Pension Insurance; since the sustainability reserve will be exhausted by 2026 as a result of your present cutbacks. Yet what do numbers matter when the government now needs money? And that shows what employees and pensioners are worth to the government. 

This development is dangerous. 

When the people no longer have the feeling that their work pays, when they no longer have the feeling that the government keeps its promises, then you lay the axe to the foundation of our society. Therefore I say today: Learn from the disaster which you have let loose with false incentives for the Bürgergeld, do not abuse the citizens’ income and assets for your wrong way, and turn back to the ground of reality! 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Stephan Brandner, February 2, 2024, Budget

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/152, pp. 19424-19425. 

Frau President. 

Dear joyous, liberal, straightforward, Deutschland-loving friends of the Alternative für Deutschland! Dear German democratic old delegation and ultra-left remainder, standing for the opposite. The budget debate draws to an end, and it is for me to find a few solemn words, and which are found. 

Four days of budget debate, four days of constant propaganda destruction [Dauerwerbeschleife] for the Alternative für Deutschland: Not one speech without the mention of my party. 

On the one side, the CDU/CSU delegation’s bugging us and our positions; that was partially an advertisement for us. On the other side, denigration, tirades of hate and incitement, Orwellian excess on the part of the blinded, light brown blend and those still further left. Many thanks for that! 

I believe anyone who still was not persuaded by the AfD, has been – following this budget debate and, before all, following the speeches of Michael Espendiller, ladies and gentlemen. 

You were right: Never again! Never again unity party, never again unity delegations, never again unity media, never again socialism, never again state demonstrations! Before all, never again socialism, not red, not brown and not green. Yet also no state bankruptcy, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Jamila Schäefer (Greens): Never again fascism!

This state bankruptcy is touching near. We do not say that, the so-called Economy Minister Habeck and the Eastern Commissioner say that: “We have…no more money”. 

Ladies and gentlemen, two years Ampel, two years of a FDP Finance Minister, two years of Quartetto Infernale – one can also speak of a gang of four on the government bench: Habeck, Scholz, Lindner and Baerbock. They have ruined our country. They have shamed our country. In two years, you have flattened one of the greatest economies on this Earth; that might be historically unique. No more money! Yet still money, for example, for a Federal Presidential Schloss Bellevue which for a loss of 500 million euros shall be renovated. Granted to the Federal President is even 200 million euros for a transition. How many dwellings could be built for that, ladies and gentlemen? Consider: A Federal President who labels millions of people out there as rats! All who are not of his opinion, are rats. 

I call upon you, dear Herr Steinmaier, reconsider that! Rats, which must finance your building excesses, ultimately finance a rat hole. 

Many thanks, ladies and gentlemen.

             Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is an insolence! Pfui Teufel!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Espendiller, January 31, 2024, Foreign Office

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/150, pp. 19170-19171. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube. And, of course, dear Frau Baerbock. 

One of my favorite headlines of last week was: “Russian Campaign Uncovered”. The Foreign Office shall have undertaken a data analysis which of course is totally trustworthy, yet quite incidentally is put forward in Spiegel. 

This data analysis comes to the conclusion that on X thousands of German language tweets were removed which include the accusation that the Federal government neglects its own people so as to support the Ukraine. O mein Gott! How has it come to this? One is, ja, completely shocked. Or yet: One is informed. 

One need only read the Finance Ministry’s report of December 2023 in which is found that, since the war’s beginning, Germany has arranged a total expenditure in the sum of 27.8 billion euros for the benefit of the Ukraine. This number does not at all include the German contribution for the EU program. Thus, 27.8 billion euros: That is nearly the 2024 budget for the Foreign Office, the Family Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry reckoned together. Yet for this Ampel of horrors, this presumably is all just peanuts. Electricity comes out of the socket, money grows on trees and stylists are paid by the taxpayers. 

Apropos taxpayers: While we here in this country burden our citizens’ income with tax rates between 14 and 45 percent, there is in the Ukraine a slim flat income tax of 18 percent, plus a 1.5 percent war tax. That means, the average Ukrainian oligarch pays less tax as a percentage than most of the normal employees in Germany. Presumably, the Christmas ski season in the Ukraine thus again runs recht gut. 

            Deborah Düring (Greens): You should be ashamed! This is unbelievable!

To the enjoyment of these pleasures come of course only those able to afford it and, in wondrous ways, are not with their countrymen at the front, 

            Vice-president Petra Pau: Herr member?

at the front, where entire generations of Ukrainians are sent to death by their President, instead of finally starting armistice negotiations. 

            Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): Kremlin propaganda! 

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): Shame on you!

Vice-president Petra Pau: Herr member – I have stopped the clock – do you accept a question or remark from member Farle? 

No, thanks. 

And this naturally interests the Ampel not at all. 

In Germany meanwhile flutter into the mail boxes the utility bills for renters, which demand in part additional payments in the four-figure range. It is estimated that an average 581 euros has been the additional payment per renter. Price driver number one: The energy costs. 

The government’s tellers of fairy tales will now again object that Putin is guilty for the high energy prices. That however is not the truth. Since it is the foreign policy and the energy policy of the Ampel and its black-red predecessor government which have gotten us into trouble. 

Besides, no one yet has been able to explain to me why it is now so much better to be dependent on American LNG instead of Russian gas. It certainly cannot be the fault of Putin's evil Politik; otherwise, the government might also make no energy deals with the United Arab Emirates. I do not know whether you have heard, but women’s rights do not look so good there. 

Deborah Düring (Greens): Since when are you interested in women’s rights? This is just a farce! 

           Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): An AfDer mouths the words “women’s rights”!

Yet to the Federal government it is quite obviously all the same – just so as the human rights of the Israelis who are routinely rocketed by their Hamas neighbors and cut down with the utmost barbarity. For years, the Federal government nevertheless supports the so-called Palestinian aid work of UNWRA with contributions in the millions. 

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Have pity! Mercy!

And for ever has there been evidence that this organization supports the Hamas terrorists. 

            Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): You are the Kremlin’s useful idiots!

On X on Sunday, we were allowed to learn that twelve members had participated in the Hamas surprise attack on October 7 of last year. And for precisely these long since known reasons, my delegation for years ever and ever again demanded to stop the payments to UNRWA and to completely dissolve UNRWA. 

Yet ever again the same thing happened: When the great media wave of indignation rolled, the payments were frozen for effect in the media, only so as to again be furtively undertaken a brief time later. And thus this Federal government not only supports terrorists and murderers, but furthermore, for example, the traffickers in the Mediterranean. And here besides we have moved for the elimination of the means. 

While we are on eliminations: We have also moved that the means for the political foundations in the Foreign Office budget of around 84 million euros be cut. With this money, all of the old parties manage a kind of network of their own embassies. Look, for example, at the website of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. There are worldwide locations; for example, in Manila, Islamabad, Lima, Harari and Tiflis. And so it is in regards all the foundations of the old parties – except of course in regards the AfD. 

Yet the question actually is: Need the German taxpayer pay for that? Our answer to that is quite clear: Nein, he need not. In that we put this question in regards all positions of Frau Baerbock’s budget, we could identify a savings potential of a total sum of 1.4 billion euros. We thereby require 21.5 percent less money than this Ampel of horrors. And quite honestly, I think, there is still more. 

Many thanks for your attention. 

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Dank sei Gott!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Tino Chrupalla, January 31, 2024, German Economy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/150, pp. 19142-19144. 

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen. Dear guests in the gallery. 

I want to begin with a citation – which is actually connected to your speech, Herr Mützenich, because you have just so presented us as if we would ruin the country – and in fact: “We businessmen have lost trust in the government.” The employers’ president, Rainer Dulger, said that to the FAZ. 

I need to say: Even to you on the government bench the alarm signals meanwhile should long since have arrived. Where remains, Herr Chancellor, your respect of which you have spoken so much in the election campaign, in regards to the farmers and citizens who for generations have kept running this economic engine of Germany? When one has no respect, then one does not love this country and that you show every day with your Federal government. 

It is precisely these people who elected all of us here, so to make Politik for Germany. You make Politik. Yet for whom do you actually make Politik, Frau Haßelmann? For the consulting firms with contracts in the millions in the energy transition area? For your arms lobby? For these people, there are billions of euros in money; yet not for the simple citizens, for those who work hard every day. 

Ladies and gentlemen, each tax euro needs first to be earned. Just then can we here decide where it can be well invested. 

Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You want out of the euro! An impoverishment program for the citizens! Ruin for business!

And I can only say that your central points are just not comprehensible; for the economic situation in Germany is desolate.

 In that regard, some salient points: Germany is the only G-7 state without economic growth. Germany in the second half of 2023 slid into a recession. The reasons for that are high energy costs, the green transformation and bad business conditions. The seriousness of the situation is obvious. Why otherwise do you yourselves as the Federal government, and also the ifo Insititute, reduce economic growth expectations for 2024? 

Und ja, now you come again with the international markets and wars of which we sadly again have to complain. In regard these, we as the Alternative für Deutschland have often sufficiently stated our position. We require peace, and we, like the citizens, want no more conflict of systems and ideologies. And precisely these wars are plainly not responsible that you as the Federal government continue to make allowance for local disadvantages which originate with you yourselves. 

Finally look outside the box, even if it is a strain, and clearly is also disillusioning for you. The firms are emigrating, or want to emigrate. When a businessman continually writes red figures, there is no possibility of obtaining more income than expense. 

A businessman needs to observe the applicable laws, and cannot simply go around. Only this government can do that, in that it wants to simply set aside the debt brake which it should protect against state indebtedness. In regards this economic balance, that is irresponsible and, before all things, harmful to the state. And it is – we saw it in the last budget – unconstitutional, what you are managing here in this country. 

Valued colleagues, the German economy lives on exports and good economic connections with all countries. On that, we are I think in this house agreed. Yet now the exports even to China and the U.S.A. break down. How actually can work for the citizens at all still pay when the basis for it is taken away? 

How many do you actually want to drive to feeding by the state? For some, it meanwhile appears gainful work scarcely still pays, thanks to the Bürgergeld. With all of these conditions, you as Ampel actors display neither humility nor insight. You therefore further drive a division in the society. 

Before all, you turn the responsibility around. That actually is the absolute hammer which we are currently experiencing here. Federal Finance Minister Lindner spoke on the weekend, that the AfD’s program would economically ruin Germany. Herr Habeck added: The AfD is poison for Germany as a business venue. Do you actually not see who the real poison in this country is? The citizens see that every day, in which they can no longer pay their bills, in which ever more businesses go bankrupt, in which ever more businesses emigrate and ever more citizens – farmers, tradesmen, Mittelstand – in this country are fed up, right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

Then you here position yourself, Frau Haßelmann, and again pronounce the great psalm of democracy: “Never again is now”. I grant that you are right. “Never again is now” when media houses, conformed to the state almost as a second Stasi, are built up and set against the opposition. That also is “Never gain is now”. There was all of that already, and recalls the darkest times of our history. 

We are not nervous. The only ones who are nervous are you and, before all, the SPD, when I consider this year’s elections in Germany, the European election, the state legislative elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thüringen. You receive the receipt from the sovereign, the German citizens. I rejoice. Had you in this entire debate and campaign let the people of Correctiv for once research Cum-Ex or Nord Stream. Of that, we await the results here in parliament, for which you are still obliged. 

            Peter Boehringer (AfD): So it is! 

            Alice Weidel (AfD): So it is!

Who carried out these acts of terror? Who is responsible for the money squandering and the problems connected thereto in regards Cum-Ex? 

In this sense, valued colleagues, I say to you: The German economy lives from exports and good business connections. We of the AfD will commit ourselves to that Germany is again attractive as a business venue, and that Germany, before all things, again receives what it deserves: An orderly and reasonable government. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Out of the EU, out of the euro!

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]     

 

 

 

Alice Weidel, January 31, 2024, Scholz Government

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/150, pp. 19128-19130. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

Both of the preceding speakers have impressively shown that in them is lacking the earnestness for the true importance and problems of this country’s citizens. It is burning in Germany, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): You’ve certainly set it afire!

and this government of overcharged miscasts and obstinate ideologues is the arsonist. This country’s exploited achievers are going into the streets: 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Do you actually pay taxes in Germany?

Farmers, tradesmen, those of the Mittelstand, hotel keepers, merchants, those in transport, they continue to protest because they can do no more – silenced by the media. 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Who do better work than you can imagine!

Three-quarters of Germans stand behind the Mittelstand protesters, three-quarters want an end to this government. 

You cut a corridor of devastation through this country. 

            Saskia Esken (SPD): You should be an author of children’s books!

– The children’s books author sits there, Frau Esken. – Yet instead of correcting, you heighten an unprecedented campaign of libel, as is here impressively displayed against the Mittelstand protest and against the opposition force upon which ever more citizens place their hope, frankly according to the motto: “If the citizen becomes disagreeable, designate him as extreme right”. 

Your auxiliary Stasi, “Correctiv”, one of the many non-governmental organizations which is provisioned by your government with ample tax money, has delivered to you the matter for that with unbelievable lies, libel and the most wicked calumny. 

            Irene Mihalic (Greens): With evidence, Frau Weidel.

The chief of “Correctiv” now lies, they had never used the word “deportation”. So far has it come: Tax-financed denunciations against a competing party! 

You are not at all ashamed 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): You are not ashamed!

to pervert the right to demonstrate, a right of freedom of the citizens opposed to the state and not the reverse, instead of listening to people who carry their emergency into the public, you yourselves demonstrate against the opposition. And you find nothing in that regard when at such demonstrations are quite openly placed on display calls for murder against opposition politicians. “Kill the AfDers” are there, and you applaud. The Federal President designates AfD voters as rats and the FDP lead candidate, AfD voters as blow-flies. Shame on you! Shame on you from top to bottom! 

With your unspeakable tax-financed libel and cries for murder campaign, you divide this country only so as to cling to your own power. 

The repair of the repair of a miscarried and inflated budget draft is a document of your arrogance and your incompetence. You speak of savings, yet you impose the costs solely on the citizens. The businessmen’s morale is grounded. The Ampel is the greatest risk to Germany as a business venue. 

Mittelstand and businesses one by one throw in the towel and take to flight. The list of firms which eliminate or displace tens of thousands of positions to foreign countries becomes daily longer. Resonant names are therein: From BASF, Bayer and Bosch, through Mercedes Continental and Miele, to SAP and ZF. De-industrialization Minister Habeck, who is known to always find love of country to be “nauseating”, now demands patriotism of the businessmen – and thereby to go bankrupt. That is the concept of this government. 

Germany is stuck deep in a recession. It is the sole industrial country to shrink, and for that neither Putin nor the world nor any conjured up world climate catastrophe bears the responsibility. This incompetent government solely bears the responsibility for this disaster in our country, and indeed with its destructive policy of artificial energy scarcity and energy of increased expense, the incessant turning of the tax screws, the ban policy, the expropriation, the money squandering, while you tell the people fairy tales of a rich country. Rich in Germany is only the overfed, over-reaching state, but not the taxpayers. 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Where do you pay taxes, Frau Weidel?

Hundreds of thousands of Germans receive in these days their heating cost bill, and often do not know how they shall pay it. Normal earners, pensioners, families, those of the Mittelstand, independents, year for year need to restrict themselves more so as still be able to make ends meet. You however certainly do not think of restricting yourselves. You grant yourselves new helicopters and motor pools. Your cabinet members expend untold sums for hairstyling and photographs. The Foreign Minister flies with a grand entourage on embarrassing missions worldwide, while the average earner does not know what at all he still can do. And you hold fast to your snob Chancellor’s Office for, believe it or not, almost 800 million euros. The giganto-maniac expansion construction alone costs almost as much as the yearly special sacrifice which you want to exact from the farmers. 

You have inflated the officials’ apparatus in just two years by around 11,500 positions. Nice for your favorites, bad for the taxpayer for whom all the fun costs eight billion euros. 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Yet you pay no taxes!

Where other governments reconsider and recoil their international engagements, you intrude everywhere with German tax money. 

Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Yet you pay no taxes here, Frau Weidel. You still pay taxes in Switzerland!

You threaten the livelihoods of your own farmers so as to save scarcely a billion euros; yet for senseless agriculture projects in the world, you expend additional hundreds of millions of euros. The much cited bike paths in Peru are only one of hundreds of superfluous development aid proposals which cost the taxpayer to the sum of 33 billions euros – for nothing, only for your NGO favorites. 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): You are no taxpayer in Germany!

You squander this money, without consideration, for eco-refrigerators in Colombia, feminist foreign policy in South Africa, for the Taliban in Afghanistan and for Hamas terrorists in Gaza. 

            Bettina Hagedorn (SPD): That is a lie!

Even to India go billions, even though India flies to the moon while, with us, infrastructure falls apart, the schools spoil and the students in part are no longer able to read, write and figure correctly. 

Against the laws of physics and logic, you further drive forward the planned economy and subventions monster of the energy transition. In energy policy, Germany is the world’s wrong-way driver. The costs explode in all dimensions. They are the principal reason for the budget crisis. They sum up to almost a trillion euros. That is a one with how many zeros, Herr Habeck? – He does not know. Those are no investments in the future, that is the most expensive destruction of a functioning infrastructure which the world has ever seen! 

You further flood the country with illegal immigrants. Everyone can come, none need go. You naturalize in an accord new voters, obtain a pseudo-legality for illegals through the residence opportunity law. Your deportation acceleration law is a deportation prevention law when the taxpayers must pay for a lawyer for rejected asylum applicants so as to continue to bring process against the overdue departure. 

            Wiebke Esdar (SPD): That is called the state of law!

With this policy, you drive the local governments to despair, explode the social system, intensify the housing emergency and undermine the domestic security. Yet, before all, you take from the Germans their Heimat. 

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): Yet you do not reside in Germany.

Over 1,000 women every year become victims of sexual violence by an immigrant, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Has your co-worker written the speech?

7,000 since the 2015 welcome putsch by the CDU Chancellor. Yet of that, you are silent; of that also, the media is silent. Under the swindle label of “Bürgergeld”, you have created a migration magnet the costs of which are long since out of control. The next budget gap already stands at the door. 

You leave the citizens in the lurch where the state would be urgently needed. What has become of the compensation for the many of those harmed by the vaccine of your Covid vaccination? What actually has become of it? What at all has become of the reappraisal of this entire disaster? 

Again and again I have here presented what is required to bring this country to the front rank. Again: Closing and control of borders, sending back illegal immigrants, following up rejected and criminal asylum applicants and anyone who has no right of residency – that is the enforcement of law and statute after years of the rule of injustice; you want to criminalize deportations; that we have seen in your campaign – a stop of energy transition, a restriction of state spending and of course an elimination of Bürgergeld for foreign citizens who have never paid into the social accounts; benefits in kind instead of money benefits is the watchword. 

Yet rational arguments clearly no longer suffice for you. You cannot well govern Germany, and you do not want to. You are ruining it. And I say to you, why: Because you your own country, because Germany, you hate.                

            Sven-Christian Kindler (Greens): You do not live in Germany!

This government hates Germany. At least accept the possibility of a democratic change of power, and make the way free for new elections! 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Rüdiger Lucassen, January 19, 2024, Populism and Cruise Missiles

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/148, pp. 18939-18940. 

Frau President. Frau Defense Commissioner. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The CDU/CSU this week carves out motions in which it demands, free of charge, “more weapons for the Ukraine”: Day before yesterday Taurus cruise missiles, today one million artillery shells. What comes next? Atomic weapons?

             Marcus Faber (FDP): That is just rubbish!

Some of my colleagues name this CDU/CSU motion “populistic”. I find this not apt. The populist listens to what the people want and then implements it. Basically, the populist, as a politician, is an authentic employee of the people. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): O Gott!

Yet what the CDU here demands, the majority of Germans do not want. 

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): And you are a pacifist?

I know: Direct democracy is to the super democrats of this house a horror. But imagine for once a referendum as in Switzerland, and indeed on the question: Should Germany deliver to the Ukraine cruise missiles and one million artillery shells? My prognosis: You would receive not ten percent for this nonsense. 

Nein, ladies and gentlemen of the Union, with this motion, you do not want to make foreign policy – you want only to irritate the government. 

            Markus Grübel (CDU/CSU): Nein, we represent German interests!

And that as opposition is of course your good right, and it, ja, also works out well. For almost two years, the FDP’s lead candidate for the European Parliament, Frau Strack-Zimmermann, passes by no microphone without demanding more weapons for the Ukraine. Yet the day before yesterday she needed to submit to party discipline and vote against the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles. It is plainly so with the FDP’s convictions: At four percent in the polls and in a government which at anytime can fly apart, for a Strack-Zimmermann also is the shirt closer than the trousers. 

Politically, the CDU/CSU motion put forward is for two reasons nonsense. In the motion text is quite correctly stated the Bundeswehr’s stock of munitions is at a dangerously low level. Yet then the CDU demands under point 2, “to comply with…the Ukrainian request…for munitions… of all calibres…from the Bundeswehr’s stock to the greatest extent possible.” Here, colleague Otte apparently does not know his own motion. The CDU thus knows that the Bundeswehr is not defense-capable – yet despite this, it wants to further disarm. That surely has features of treason [Das hat schon Züge von Landesverrat]. 

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): You just had to say that!

And second: The war for the Ukraine will not be decided on the battlefield. Everyone knows that. It would meanwhile thus be a German responsibility to start a diplomatic great offensive from the Bundestag, 

            Sara Nanni (Greens): Oh ja!

instead of here calculating munitions needs. Were you statesmen, you would, immediately and with regard to the impending U.S. elections, begin such diplomacy and not waste additional time with such senseless motions. 

Many thanks. 

            Joe Weingarten (SPD): That is again the speech of the Russian press office! 

            Götz Frömming (AfD, turned to the CDU/CSU): Show window motions! 

 

[trans: tem]