Finance Minister Lindner’s draft budget for the coming year stipulates that new borrowing should only amount to 17.2 billion euros – after almost 140 billion this year. The Union criticizes that the calculation is based on outdated data.
The Union has criticized Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner’s budget for the coming year, which the cabinet will deal with this Friday, as “unrealistic”. The deputy chairman of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Mathias Middelberg, told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” that “formally” Linder was complying with the debt brake with the budget draft for 2023. “In fact, the plan is already unrealistic.”
“The economic data on which it is based is already outdated,” said Middelberg. “The situation will continue to deteriorate in the foreseeable future due to the Ukraine war and inflation.” Lindner’s draft budget stipulates that, in order to comply with the debt brake, new debt should only be 17.2 billion euros – after almost 140 billion this year. This is to be achieved through the phasing out of corona-related expenses, but also thanks to higher tax revenues and greater withdrawals from reserves. The draft budget has a total volume of 445.2 billion euros, around 50 billion euros less than in the current year. Lindner will present the details at a press conference at 1:45 p.m.
Middelberg criticized that the draft budget “lacked any ambition”. “A real review of spending, which the traffic lights had expressly promised in their coalition agreement, is not taking place,” the CDU politician told the newspaper. “Only special expenses to combat the corona pandemic will be reduced. You will look in vain for sustainable restructuring.”
Criticism of the budget draft also came from the organization Bürgerbewegung Finanzwende. “If Finance Minister Lindner is serious about solid state finances, then he must overturn tax privileges for the super-rich,” said board member Gerhard Schick to the newspapers of the editorial network Germany.
For example, tax exemptions from inheritance tax, which cost billions, have been retained to this day. 40 percent of people who received an inheritance or a gift with a sum of more than ten million euros paid no taxes at all.
“This is an intolerable situation, especially in these times when Christian Lindner is talking about deprivation,” said the former Greens member of the Bundestag. “When many people have to tighten their belts, parallel gifts for the super-rich are poison for social cohesion.”
