2024-01-11 12:18:15
The SPD cries out for higher government loans like addicts clamor for new substances. She wants to declare a new emergency for this year, or ideally two. She would even prefer to replace the debt brake in the Basic Law with a softer rule – so that the federal and state governments can spend more money.
Whether it’s a party conference at the beginning of December or a parliamentary group meeting at the start of the year, the message is always the same: We need more loans. As if all the problems in the world could be solved in this way. The comrades deliberately ignore the associated risks and side effects. In fact, these are huge, both in practical and legal as well as political terms.
1.6 billion does not constitute an emergency
The coalition partner FDP is resisting another emergency resolution – for good reasons, as the statements for the hearing on the 2024 budget by the responsible Bundestag committee this Thursday show. Even the expert Alexander Thiele appointed by the SPD speaks of a “constitutional risk that cannot be neglected” with regard to the follow-up costs of the Ahr Valley disaster.
Others are even clearer. Rightly so: 1.6 billion euros does not constitute an emergency. It is hard to imagine that the FDP will follow this questionable path. Even less that the Union should support this. Nor does it help to write a new debt rule into the Basic Law.
A comment from Alexander Armbruster Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 118 Eckart Lohse Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 15 Dietrich Creutzburg, Berlin Published/Updated: Recommendations: 77 Manfred Schäfers Published/Updated: Recommendations: 17 Patrick Bernau and Alexander Wulfers Published/ Updated: , Recommendations: 121
If the SPD parliamentary group officially decides that the debt brake in its current form is no longer appropriate, it will not only damage the climate in the coalition, but also its own Chancellor, as Olaf Scholz has repeatedly committed to the brake. In fact, experience shows that additional spending flexibility is usually used for things that are currently met with approval and thus improve election prospects. Investments and other measures that only bear fruit later are often left behind.
This only increases the mountain of debt and the interest burden – without the national economy being strengthened to the same extent. This is the real risk to prosperity – contrary to what the SPD claims.
#addiction #government #loans #fatal