It is a debut work, which the cabinet will bend over this Friday. The draft budget for 2023 is on the agenda, and it is the first for which Christian Lindner, as finance minister, was solely responsible. All of the previous drafts were largely conceived by his predecessor, who is now Chancellor.
This fate should not befall Lindner. Maybe that’s why he’s trying to get the most out of his current position. In any case, he made it clear often enough that his first household should be something very special: Lindner original, only real with the debt brake!
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, there has been much murmuring in Berlin about whether the FDP has once again chosen the wrong ministries. Lindner wanted to be finance minister at least as urgently as Guido Westerwelle was foreign minister. While he then had to watch how the Union duo Schäuble/Merkel from the Ministry of Finance and the Chancellery first cashed in on the central FDP promise of a tax reform and then watch the Liberals self-destruct, Lindner has now been able to watch for weeks how the green duo Habeck/ Baerbock has moved into the center of events because of the Ukraine war. He himself had to content himself with handing over the required billions.
If you want something that costs something, you can’t get past him
In view of the draft budget, however, one is not making an overly daring bet when one predicts that the question of whether the FDP has backed the wrong horse with the finance department will soon be asked much less frequently.
Because of the aftermath of the corona pandemic, inflation, the Ukraine war and the energy crisis, distribution conflicts are coming to the country, which will be reflected in the budgets that Lindner will set up in this and the coming years. Anyone who wants something in the coalition that costs money has to get past him. At least as long as he has the Chancellor’s backing – and Olaf Scholz knows very well that there is currently no power option for him in the federal government beyond the FDP.
For Lindner, the current draft budget is therefore, on the surface, a triumph. He wanted to comply with the debt brake, the debt brake will be observed – at least initially. In fact, however, the first budget since 2019, with which the government again complies with the debt rules of the Basic Law, is a grim number oracle. Lindner’s calculation only works because he has breakfasted a good 40 billion euros from an old reserve. At the same time, the federal government must plan 30 billion euros next year alone to service its debt. Gone are the days when federal debt was a negligible budget item.
The state’s leeway is very limited for years to come
In addition, the pension must now be supported with an incredible 112 billion euros, and the trend is rising. Even with an increased tax subsidy, health insurance can no longer get by, which is why increases in contributions will soon eat up what the government has organized elsewhere in the form of billions in relief. Favorite traffic light projects such as basic child security, citizen income or share pensions have not yet been included in the financial tableau, and the bitter truth is: they shouldn’t cost much. The state’s room for maneuver will remain narrow for years to come. The corona debts have to be repaid in the next legislative period, which will cost about as much as the federal government is allowed to take out new loans according to the debt brake. For the rest, the regular state revenues have to suffice.
The traffic light partners have fundamentally different ideas about how the state should handle money. Everyone is shouting “relief,” but while the FDP understands this to mean giving citizens more of their income, the SPD and the Greens prefer to collect more money and then redistribute it. The SPD and the Greens would also rather raise taxes than cut back on the government program. Lindner, on the other hand, thinks there is plenty of money and tax increases are harmful in the crisis. But there is a lack of strength and courage across party lines for a major and really meaningful reform – lower taxes on labor income, higher taxes on capital gains and inheritances.
The conflicts that are now breaking out were always inherent in traffic lights. However, because it is the conflicts that are becoming more and more pressing in society, the government must not avoid them. Old and young, wealthy and poor, childless and families, city dwellers and country people, homeowners and tenants: interests diverge everywhere. Balancing them will be even more difficult than the budget.