Lindner must end the red-green spending addiction
It is correct that Finance Minister Christian Lindner wants to comply with the debt brake again from next year, says WELT author Dorothea Siems
Source: Martin UK Lengemann/WELT; Claudius Plough
For three years, the federal government has set one debt record after the next. The traffic light coalition wastes billions in taxes without restraint. It is up to Finance Minister Lindner to fight the huge costs – and the illusion that the climate change will not be painful.
Dhe money grows on trees and electricity comes out of the socket. Many German citizens suspect that the federal government conducts its policy according to this motto.
The calming phrases with which the impending shutdown of the last nuclear power plants is accompanied feed this impression, as do the full-bodied promises that nobody will have to painfully feel the expensive consequences of the heat transition, mobility transition and energy transition.
However, the tax billions to finance more and more state aid for the economy and citizens are not there at all.
For three years, the federal government has set one debt record after the next, thus narrowing the budgetary leeway for decades. In times of Corona and to cope with the energy shock after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, it was right that the state went to the max and also took out loans for this.
But the federal ministries are not stopping their apparent obsession with spending in the current year and are again allowing themselves to be astonishingly wasteful. The taxpayers’ association has listed 30 particularly annoying cases in an as yet unpublished “savings book for the federal budget 2023”.
They range from the expenses of the Federal Foreign Office for a make-up artist, to the XXL new building of the Chancellery to the exorbitant costs for the “climate protection contracts” announced by Economics Minister Robert Habeck for selected industrial groups.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner is determined to comply with the debt brake again next year. But despite record tax revenue, there is a huge financial gap in the budget due to the excessive spending requests of his cabinet colleagues.
The SPD is flirting with further “special funds” – i.e. new debt-financed shadow budgets – for example for education or housing. And just like the Greens, the Social Democrats would not mind introducing a property levy to finance new social benefits such as the announced basic child security.
Germany on an uncertain path
The idea of looking for savings opportunities in the individual budgets of the ministries has few supporters among the two coalition partners of the FDP. In any case, the debt brake is considered a stale recipe by many in traffic lights.
The chancellor promises a new economic miracle that will take place as a result of the forced climate policy. In contrast, the leading economic researchers see Germany on an uncertain path – and nowhere trees on which money grows.
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