Household talk at Illner
Lindner consultant Feld: Investments are “regulatory shit”
By Marko Schlichting
December 1, 2023, 5:29 a.m
The federal government has to save money, and Friedrich Merz has a few suggestions that he reveals to Maybrit Illner. The CDU leader does not want to touch the debt brake. And he has the finance minister’s closest advisor completely on his side.
It is a sometimes heated discussion that top politicians from the government and opposition are having on Maybrit Illner on ZDF. Once again it’s about the traffic light coalition’s budget policy. First of all, CDU leader Friedrich Merz is no longer necessarily calling for new elections next year. “That now depends very much on the federal government. The federal government has to make decisions and then we will see what happens in the next few days and weeks,” he says.
According to Finance Minister Christian Lindner, 17 billion euros are missing from the federal budget for 2024 following the ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court. SPD leader Saskia Esken doesn’t yet know how this will affect the budget. She is sure that Lindner will present this next week. The deputy president of the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt from the Greens, also has no idea what the budget should look like. Like Esken, she is calling for the debt brake to be suspended again next year. WELT’s deputy editor-in-chief, Robin Alexander, can imagine: “We’ll find 17 billion.” Unlike top Union politicians, he believes that Germany is not in a state crisis. He says: “We are in a real government crisis.” Merz agrees.
Merz for sale of the railway’s logistics division
CDU leader Merz criticizes the demands of the SPD and the Greens to declare the emergency again next year and thus suspend the debt brake again. “With 1,000 billion euros in tax revenue and a 425 billion euros federal budget – there can be no emergency if you now have to save 17 billion euros elsewhere.” He had already said before where Merz wanted to save: heating law, basic child support, citizens’ benefit. But on Thursday he brought other ideas into play: the sale of “table silver”, i.e. state-owned companies.
He’s not the first: Some experts had already openly considered selling the state’s shares in Telekom, which could be used to completely plug the budget gap for next year. Merz brings the company DB Schenker into play. Schenker AG came to the railway a good twenty years ago and runs its logistics division under his name, with the exception of rail freight transport. DB Schenker, like the railway itself, is a state-owned company. Merz: “By selling this company, you could expand the railway network for years. But this coalition does not want to sell the company because they are of the opinion that they are the better entrepreneurs with one of the largest logistics groups in the world. There is potential without end.” Merz also sees this with the EU’s Nextgeneration Fund, from which Germany is entitled to 30 billion euros. So far only a fraction of them have been accessed. Merz: “The question is whether we burden our children and grandchildren with even more debt. And at this point we simply say no, at least as long as we have so many other options to use it.”
Debt brake reform
Merz rejects a reform of the debt brake. However, this is important, warns Göhring-Eckardt. The idea: Because the debt brake gives the federal government only limited scope for taking out loans, these loans should only be used for investments in the future. Current expenses such as pensions or citizens’ money need to be paid from tax revenues. Investments for the future include, for example, new schools or the expansion of roads and the rail network, says Göring-Eckardt. Above all, investments for the economy must be guaranteed.
Lars Feld sees it completely differently. The economist is briefly added to the show. He is Finance Minister Lindner’s “personal representative for overall economic development” – and a fan of the debt brake. This allows a lot of flexibility, he praises. And it enables high subsidies for the economy. But Feld is not convinced “that the subsidies paid here are the right way forward.” He criticizes government support for companies that want to invest in German locations: “The question is: Why don’t they invest in Germany of their own accord?” He gives the answer himself: For many companies, investing in Germany would not be worthwhile without subsidies.
Feld would not support energy-intensive companies so that they remain in Germany. “I do think that we also have a number of companies in the energy-intensive economy that will stay in the country due to further specialization and make further investments.” Although jobs would disappear from Germany if certain companies left, fewer people would need jobs anyway due to the demographic change in the population. Instead of subsidizing companies, Feld is calling for better conditions for their establishment: cheaper energy prices or less bureaucracy. He has another recipe for climate policy: “On the one hand, I am aware that even in pragmatic situations you have to do what I was taught to do as regulatory bullshit: pay subsidies. But the leading role in climate policy must be the CO2 Have pricing.”
The discussion on this topic will not stop. This morning it will reach a new peak. The federal government then wants to have the supplementary budget for 2023 discussed by the Bundestag.