Wo werden die Bürger geschröpft? Erst nach der Nordrhein-Westfalen-Wahl im Mai soll es zum Showdown kommen. Das ist gefährlich for the country and the government
It belongs to the political craft that a finance minister before the election does not look to the cards. So it was prior to the elections in the fall, when Peer Steinbrück (SPD) in interviews, although it said that you have to save soon - but refused to say specifically where. Now back to an election in May in North Rhine-Westphalia. And again, the Finance Minister remains vague: The inevitable reduction of public debt will definitely lead to resistance, said Steinbrück successor, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU). But who to call early to save a lot of proposals, which would only "all talked to death."
waiting. Dodge. Only be elected once, is the motto. Remain helpless citizens in elections are supposed to decide between political options - but which lacks any basis for decision.
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It is now all comes down to a big showdown. Until May, the black-yellow government will somehow muddling. If then the important state election in North Rhine-Westphalia won, everything should be decided at once whether a tax reform in 2011 or not. Whether the health care system is radically restructured or not. But above all, where the CDU and FDP will save concrete to reduce the record-high federal debt. Social benefits are reduced? Subsidies deleted? Or rises at the end only the VAT for all?
The political showdown, the decision at the latest possible time, is a specialty of the Chancellor. It is the pattern in the Angela Merkel makes policy. So it was in its first term, in the Union and SPD fought sometimes for weeks and was silent, the Chancellor - to hermusste in a single, painfully long night session a compromise. And now it is again. Only that the multitude of problems this time might be too big to solve at a stroke. A bigger risk for themselves and the economy has made this Chancellor ever.
reminds Basically, the situation of black and yellow Coalition government at the beginning of the title of a movie classic by Stanley Kubrick: 2010, the year when we make contact - contact with the economic reality in the country. And that is plenty of ambivalence. On the one hand - based on the growth figures of the economy - a mini-boom possible. After the incredible fall 2009, the economy in 2010 could again grow by two percent, and although the mere fact that the export-dependent industries such as automotive or engineering re-sell more abroad.
As for public finances, threatens the other, but a mega disaster. Record up to 100 billion euros Finance Minister Schäuble has new debt this year alone. Even Now the federal government will pay € 40 billion annually in interest - and is benefiting right now even the fact that the debts due on the interest rate is historically low.
is particularly desperate the situation in the cities and towns: Up to EUR 50 billion new debt they have accumulated over the next four years, estimates of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities. This is not an expression of luxurious use, but from want the misfortune of all, it not only the money for the maintenance of swimming pools, and libraries - but also for the expansion of child care, to actually want all parties. From 2013, parents of one-and two children a year Legal claim to a place. Dumb only if the respective city or municipality then has no money for it. "Here, the policy should be honest in order to" produce not new politics, calls Gerd Landsberg from the German Association of Towns and Municipalities.
This is the point at which the Finance Minister comes into the game - that political fox, then, which the Chancellor trusts appeared as the only bring out the showdown in May the maximum. Wolfgang Schäuble, the CDU is connected, so he does not yet on saving details in order not to jeopardize the election victory of his party in North Rhine-Westphalia. But the lawyer Schäuble also feels obliged laws and treaties, and therefore, looks also the problem that has given him the Chancellor along the way: The most important foundations of his work - the debt brake of the Basic Law and the debt rules of the Maastricht Treaty - will not fit partout to the coalition agreement in 2011 provided for tax reform.
I'm glad God that we have the debt brake, so the prohibition of future debt, have the Basic Law, "Schäuble admitted in an interview with the Sunday newspaper. "I do not know if I would have shown up without this law the job of finance minister." Tens of billions of euros would have to save the federal level because of this debt ban in 2011, not once, but year after year. This requires a sharper cuts, as it did the politically explosive Agenda 2010, the former SPD-Green government. And it means that the CDU and FDP have to give either to the proposed tax cuts worth € 24 billion - or that cut a lot of radical, save and delete, is as in the history of the Federal Republic of ever happened.
This is the core of the debate that will continue through May. The FDP insists on tax cuts, because the German tax system "virtually identical expropriation Moves" (party leader Guido Westerwelle) have. Underlying this is the image of a greedy, greedy state, unabashedly its citizens for decades the money from his pocket pulls. The state was "an expensive weakling who presumes to more and more influence," etched the new party general secretary Chris Lindner in the Tagesspiegel.
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CDU and CSU have no substantive counter this ideology: Although internal party now no longer solely the financial and budget experts think that can ill afford tax cuts in 2011. But the Union lacks a political counter-proposal to the radicalism of Westerwelle-liberals, a sort of bourgeois Agenda 2010, to modernize the society könnte, ohne dem Staat die finanziellen Grundlagen zu entziehen.
Genau dies ist das Manko der Merkelschen Showdown-Strategie. Weil alle Probleme erst im Mai angepackt werden sollen, der Bundeshaushalt 2011 und die Finanzplanung für die Jahre darauf dagegen schon bis Ende Juni stehen müssen, fehlt ganz einfach die Zeit, um solch ein bürgerliches Gesamtkonzept zu erarbeiten.
So läuft die Politik der schwarz-gelben Bundesregierung auf die Wiederholung der amerikanischen Reaganomics hinaus. Genauer: auf eine Wiederholung der bitteren Erfahrungen von Reagans damaligem Budgetdirektor David Stockman.
The Education of David Stockman ist der Titel eines aufsehenerregenden Artikels, der 1981 in der Zeitschrift The Atlantic Monthly appear. Spectacular because he described the whole despair of the man who could enforce the huge tax cuts, but it failed to cut public spending accordingly. Stockman, then 35 years old, had been called to the election of Ronald Reagan to head the Office of Management and Budget. He was to accomplish the shift to the conservative supply-side policy. The idea: to produce through radical tax cuts, an economic boom - and thanks to spending cuts at the same time close the giant budget gap again.
Most economists doubted then that it could succeed. And it did. "We had a huge tax cut implemented, but the spending cuts were no longer "a drop in the bucket, Stockman confessed in a 1986 interview with Der Spiegel. Since he was already resigned from the post of budget director. Stockman left a budget deficit of more than 200 billion dollars.
A similar disaster for Germany can be prevented only if it abandons the FDP in the coming months of their tax cut ideology. That should do it without losing face. Already we gamble in government circles about a possible summit meeting between Merkel and Westerwelle in which the Chancellor makes far-reaching concessions to a major tax reform - in 2011 at the could be used, which might come 2013, the election year. not "It was important, the FDP was now" in the corner, it is said in parts of the Union. "We must build bridges."
remaining problem is that the black-yellow government savings even without tax cuts must be more than any government before. Next week begins the formal establishment of the federal budget 2011: Then the Treasury sent the so-called establishment circular to the ministries. You must then make their first budget proposals.
could save money or get the federal government as
* by increasing the contribution to unemployment insurance from 2.8 to 4 per cent (ten billion €)
* by the taxation of previously tax-free holiday and night supplements (two billion euros)
* by eliminating the commuter tax (five billion euros)
* by a zero in collective bargaining in the public service. Above all, it is the government internally and inevitable. With surprise to register in the black and yellow bearing the demand of officials to five percent more pay: if you had in the crisis finally the privilege of tenure.
All these measures would reduce the government deficit but only once - but the Minister of Finance needs each year to save at least ten billion euros. And yet there is no idea, can succeed like that. Even in the non-Treasury.
will continue until May weggeduckt.
TIME online
# # Date By Marc Brost
07/01/2010 - 18:14 clock
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