Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, December 11, 2019, Old Age Poverty

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing

Old Age Poverty

German Bundestag, December 11, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/133, pp. 16589-16590

[Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. She is a public pensions administrator and a member of the Bundestag social security committee. The Tafeln is a quasi-public institution providing low-cost meals to people of low income throughout the country. Jörg Meuthen is a national chairman of the AfD and leader of the AfD delegation in the European Parliament. Hartz-IV is a large-scale unemployment compensation program.]

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

Today we speak on the theme of old age poverty, because at the Tafeln the alarm has been sounded, because they are no longer equal to the urgent demand on their provisions and because ever more old people must stand there, people of pension age. These people have often worked an entire lifetime and now nevertheless are directed to donated provisions.

For the same reason, dear colleagues, we could hold an hour of debate because the DIW [German Institute of Economic Research] a short while ago has stated that more people of old age no longer request basic security although they have made a claim, having in fact gone to the office and requested aid. For the same reason we could each week hold an hour of debate because ever more old people cannot pay their rent or electric bill. And for the same reason we could today request an hour of debate because in the meantime – even in the pre-Christmas time –  seniors pulling deposit bottles out of trash bins becomes part of the image of the German inner cities.

In other words: We are speaking today on the complete failure of pension, labor market and social policy and the decades-long savings cuts in the statutory pension insurance.

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): What is the AfD’s concept?

            Marcus Kurth (Greens): You want to completely destroy the pension insurance!

Nowhere in Europe do the citizens pay so high a contribution from their income, nowhere in Europe do they keep so comparatively little of their pay and nowhere in Europe must they work so long for it.

            Matthias W. Birkland (Linke): To follow Herr Meuthen would only be worse.

That is the desired policy since 2001. That is the sorry sum of your policy.

The statutory pension insurance, the once reliable basis for the old age care of all contributors, is only one support; that is to say,  the people themselves must freely provide the corporate and private old age care.

            Achim Kessler (Linke): What then is the AfD’s pension concept?

The SPD, with its reform of Hartz-IV, has created a long-term, low-income sector. This low-income sector is no peripheral matter but is today a structural problem. In 2017, over 32% of the people in my state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had less than 2,000 euros gross at their disposal. Mark well: The 2,000 euros refers to qualified employees. The less qualified employees naturally earn less.

Do you know in which occupations the people of Germany earn very little? The cleaning occupations, followed by the tourism branch and the employees of hotels and gas stations. Tourism for us in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is an important branch of the economy. The employees in the tourism branch toil twelve-hour shifts for starvation wages. What does that have to do with the pension topic? Low wages later become low pensions.

Add to this the continual reduction of the pension level from 55 percent in the year 1990 to around 48 percent today. And he who has the possibility to privately provide, with for example a corporate pension, will have his payment reduced by some 19 percent  by the double contribution for sickness and care insurance. And he who as a small investor wants to improve his pension with a securities savings plan, as required by policy for years, will soon have the yield taxed away.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): “Yield taxed away”? What’s with that nonsense?

Moreover, the German pension insurance for years has been burdened with ever more non-insurance obligations. The payments thereto are in the meantime made known: In 2017, over 31 billion euros, and this  year over 34 billion euros; money with which old age poverty could be ameliorated if the pension insurance had it.

Thus it is good – and I welcome it – that we here today have the opportunity to speak of this, primarily since the coalition delegations are presently more occupied with themselves and their troubled relations than with a reasonable pension concept.

I honestly find it refreshing that it is the basic pension that the CDU/CSU wants to first toss overboard should the SPD take leave of the government. That is understandable, since that concept is trash. It is expensive, unworkable and unjust.

On that, all the experts are agreed, from the Bertelsmann foundation to the OECD. Yet then, dear colleagues, and not only those of the left, I ask you: If you so take to heart the struggle against old age poverty then why have you not agreed to our motion in committee which comprises exactly what is unanimously demanded by the experts, namely an allowance resolution [Freibetragslösung] for the basic old age security?

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): Because we have a much better motion and a 

            better concept.  

That would be the simplest and safest way to relieve the low-income pensioner. Can it be that you have not agreed to the motion only because it comes from us?

            Bernd Baumann (AfD): Exactly!

You should yet again reconsider your position in regards the poor pensioner. Today’s hour of debate shall give you the opportunity.

Many thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Martin Hess, November 28, 2019, Interior Ministry Budget

Martin Hess

Interior Ministry Budget

German Bundestag, November 28, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/131, pp. 16392-16393

[Martin Hess is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg. He is a police officer. He here responds to a statement by German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer concerning the ministry budget.]

Right honorable Herr President. Honored colleagues.

Herr Interior Minister, listening to your statements on the domestic security situation, an objective observer can come to only one conclusion: Either you suffer from a major disturbance in the perception of reality or you are simply flattering yourself. What you presented here in regards the security situation has nothing to do with the reality of life in our country. Germany is becoming ever more insecure and the state of law loses ever more ground to its enemies. That is the irrevocable truth.

Every normal thinking person in this country recognizes that. Why otherwise must you expend ever more money for domestic security? Otherwise, why must you worry about an increase of positions for security officials if Germany is allegedly more secure than it has been in the last 30 years? The citizen will not allow himself be treated as stupid and he recognizes the contradiction. On one, single basis you tell the citizens of our country the often repeated fairy tales of an oh, so more secure Germany. You would mislead them with the circumscribed security policy failures of a dilettante.

But I say to you: Ever more citizens see through this farce, and it does not help that you continually attempt to tell the citizens that their subjective sense of security does not correspond to the factual situation, entirely as if our citizens were only imagining that Germany is becoming ever more insecure.

These days at the Christmas markets across this country, it is indeed obvious to all who here is actually suffering from a major disturbance of perception. Our children will not be able to remember a Christmas without terror blockades and heavily armed police. Precisely that is the central evidence of your failures and it confirms that the citizens are right.

With this budget, you are attempting to explain away security policy problems which would not exist save for your unacceptable failures in the area of domestic security. Had the federal government reached the correct decisions, then Germany today would be essentially more secure. You had and have the possibility of implementing a security policy which can lead to a maximum protection of our citizens, Yet precisely here, one of the central, if not the most central, duties of our state, you fail pitifully – with fatal consequences for the life, health, freedom and property of our citizens. This security policy disaster we cannot and will not accept nor submit to. The greatest possible security for our citizens must finally be established and in that regard there can be no compromise.

You here are always proclaiming the defense of our fundamental order and values, yet you do the exact opposite. You in all earnestness wish to distribute, so as to promote integration, 7 million euros of tax money to mosques, and to DITIB mosques, even though security officials state that the DITIB is hatching large-scale anti-state activities and therefore must actually be subjected to intelligence service surveillance. You are financing Islamists and Salafists. That, Herr Minister, is “making the goat the gardener.” We will not participate in the financing of the enemies of the state.

With open eyes, we go about our republic acknowledging how poorly prepared is our state of security. The Islamist terror danger has never been so high, migrant and knife crime increases steadily, the number of serious sexual offenses, like gang rapes, increases. Women and children are meantime thrown in front of moving trains. They not longer go out to health clinics, public swimming pools, schools and job centers. The assaults on police, firemen and rescue workers become ever more brutal. Clan criminals tyrannize entire neighborhoods, storm police stations and health clinics. Security officials confirm a massive influx and warn of new, dangerous clans with combat veteran migrants.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Irresponsible, what you are doing!

That is the machinery of war which you, with your fatal migration policy, allow unhindered into our country. And that is a scandal.

In the capital, with the consent and tolerance of all state institutions, drug dealers, completely unhindered, can peddle drugs. That certainly has nothing to do with the safest Germany of all time. Just the opposite. Germany is mutating into a security madhouse.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Unbelievable!

In light of this devastating situation, there remains for me only an urgent appeal: It is your duty to defend, as best as possible, the citizens. May you, God willing, finally begin to do that!

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): How good it is, that you no longer train any policemen!

[Translated by Todd Martin]

           

Björn Höcke, December 3, 2019, PISA Study

Björn Höcke

PISA Study

AfD Kompakt, December 3, 2019

[Björn Höcke is the Alternative für Deutschland chairman in the eastern German state of Thüringen as well as leader of the AfD delegation in the Thüringen legislature. He is a teacher and here comments on the German results in the latest Program for International Student Assessment.]

The disastrous results of the current PISA study primarily demonstrate one thing: Our demands for a reconsideration of an education policy of elementary competences and skills like reading and writing as well as for the abolition of such questionable teaching methods as “Writing through Hearing” are more relevant than ever. As early as 2015, we demanded the abolition of this method, yet the old parties retain it. The previous PISA results have primarily lead to a glossed-over, not a performance oriented, system of grading. Only with the AfD is there a performance oriented education policy! The already strained situation in education policy will be consequently aggravated by the chaotic immigration policy. The portion of migrants in the current study, greater than that of 2015, in combination with the moreover striking scarcity of teachers, has contributed considerably to the notably bad results in reading competence.

[Translated by Todd Martin]