Lindner’s tweet gives a deep insight: Clammy coffers are tugging at the cohesion of the traffic lights

At the start of the week, the whole dilemma of the federal government becomes apparent: the money is as tight as the ideas are different. Finance Minister Lindner can stop ideas from the SPD and Greens, but it is difficult to push through FDP concepts. So the mood becomes increasingly irritated.

Christian Lindner does not write all the tweets on his account personally, but this one does: After all the online media published a report in the morning that the Federal Minister of Finance and FDP chairman had thwarted the Chancellor’s relief plans, Lindner grabbed his smartphone himself at lunchtime: “To the reports , I would have prevented help for low earners, I can only say: on the contrary!”, Lindner writes and ends the tweet with its author ID “CL”. Communication is a top priority in this case.

At the end of June, a member of the coalition committee had expressed the hope that cooperation in the cabinet would improve again once all ministers had enjoyed the much-needed vacation. But even during the parliamentary summer break, an open dispute broke out between the ministers and the government factions of the traffic light over how to deal with inflation and rising energy prices. Lindner, who has returned from his honeymoon, does not even deny with his admission that he has refused to approve alleged plans by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz for new aid.

“For 2023, I propose, among other things, a higher basic allowance and a fair wage and income tax rate!” writes Lindner. However, he does not deny the core of the report: that the finance minister prevented an aid package worth five billion euros that Scholz allegedly wanted to present on Friday. Lindner does not deny this conflict and his last sentence reveals what he was about: “The plan is compatible with the debt brake.” That means: It wasn’t Scholz’s plan. Lindner vigorously defends himself against additional spending in the current and next year, because otherwise it will become increasingly difficult for him and the FDP to push through the return to the debt brake in 2023.

And the debt brake greets us every day

After three years of a pandemic, a 100 billion euro loan for the Bundeswehr, two relief packages totaling 30 billion euros in spring, the Uniper rescue and uncertain to catastrophic economic prospects, the traffic light’s financial scope for its various projects is shrinking rapidly. Their social, energy and climate policy ambitions are increasingly in danger of failing due to the ever-decreasing budget. Because the Social Democrats and Greens are also aware of this, they are increasingly questioning the return to the debt brake in the coming year.

She is “quite firmly convinced” that the “crisis situation” of the past pandemic years has not yet been overcome, SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken repeated her corresponding demand from the past few days on ZDF in the morning. Now “the new crisis situation, namely the war” is added. But if you don’t want to increase the debt, you have to get to the income side: Esken spoke again about the advantages of an excess profit tax for crisis profiteers or a wealth tax – both red rags for the FDP and its chairman.

Lindner had already explained in a detailed interview with ntv.de last Wednesday: “The state must no longer increase price developments with its financial firepower. In addition, we can no longer afford debt because the state itself now has high interest burdens.” At a press conference on Monday afternoon, Lindner repeated this decision almost verbatim. It is disputed whether war and pandemic allow the debt brake to be suspended according to the law. In any case, abolition or reform is not an option: the Union and FDP reject changes and the two-thirds majority required for this cannot be achieved without the CDU/CSU.

Scholz’ promise and Lindner’s contribution

However, the federal government’s financial leeway largely determines how much funding is available to cushion the immense increases in energy prices. The Chancellor, who has little football affinity, promised on Friday that he would not let anyone down with the Liverpool slogan “You’ll never walk alone”. The expansion of housing benefits planned by SPD Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil and a moratorium on evictions drawn up by the SPD parliamentary group for tenants who cannot pay their ancillary costs tend not to live up to this promise.

Anyone who has to apply for housing benefit or has to smack their property manager in order to prove that he or she is too broke to pay back heating costs has already arrived in poverty. So how could the middle be protected from impoverishment? After all, it’s not just the government that is concerned about “popular uprisings” if large parts of society suddenly experience social decline.

A cap on gas prices is out of the question for the traffic light, despite isolated pleas from its own ranks: not affordable, no incentive to save energy and, from the FDP’s point of view, probably too planned. Lindner rejected this idea at ntv.de as well as the proposal by Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir to reduce VAT on certain foods such as fruit and vegetables. The idea is “not targeted and we can’t afford it”.

FDP wishes hardly go together with red-green

What does the FDP propose instead? Lindner wants to pay wage and income tax, true to the FDP slogan “More net from the gross”. In March of this year, the basic allowance for 2022 was increased to EUR 10,347. Only the excess income is taxed. In addition, Lindner wants to take measures against cold progression to prevent inflation-compensating wage increases from being eaten up by wage tax. The catch: not every employee gets wage adjustments in the amount of the immense inflation. In turn, only employees who earn more than the minimum wage benefit from the increase in the basic allowance.

If the SPD and the Greens are to agree to the project, in return they will insist on further relief for transfer money recipients, low earners, pensioners and students. Red and Green want to pack on it, especially when it comes to the successor to Hartz IV, citizen income, the planned basic child security and child benefit – and beyond inflation, after all both parties have promised improvements, not maintaining the status quo.

There is a risk of additional expenses for Lindner with lower income, because of course an increase in the basic allowance also costs money, while adjustments to the cold progression are equivalent to forgoing income. In his tweet, Lindner did not explain why these measures should still be in line with the debt brake.

But there will still be an opportunity in a summer when politicians from all three governing parties would rather present their ideas publicly than vote on them internally. That inevitably produces losers: those whose pushes don’t get through. Since a similar dynamic can be seen in the debates about arms deliveries to Ukraine, nuclear power plant lifetimes and Corona, the cohesion of the still young governing coalition is increasingly being put to the test.


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