Finance
Jusos and JU argue about the debt brake
Jusos boss Philipp Türmer advocates suspending the debt brake. photo
© Moritz Frankenberg/dpa
The Constitutional Court has declared the federal government’s financing tricks to be incompatible with the debt brake. Now the parties are arguing about them – and their offspring are fighting too.
In view of the huge financial gaps in the budget, Juso chairman Philipp Türmer has called for the abolition of the constitutionally enshrined Debt brake called for. “We have to decide whether we want to save the climate or the debt brake,” said the head of the SPD youth organization to the “Rheinische Post”. “The debt brake must be suspended at short notice for 2024 and disappear from the Basic Law as quickly as possible. We will apply for this at the federal party conference.” In order to suspend the debt brake, it is necessary to establish and justify an emergency situation.
His counterpart from the Junge Union, Johannes Winkel, took the opposite position and vehemently warned against suspending the debt brake in 2024. “If that happens, the CDU and CSU will have to sue against it,” demanded the head of the CDU/CSU young generation via the news portal t -on-line. Sustainability for future generations is not only an ecological but also an economic question. Interest obligations already represent the third largest budget item.
Winkel also contradicted the call for a change to the debt brake, which is being heard by the SPD and the Greens as well as some Christian Democrats. “The political left acts as if it were virtually forbidden to make investments from the regular budget,” said Winkel. It cannot be the Union’s position to take away future generations’ scope for decision-making through mountains of debt and interest. “I can only warn everyone not to open this discussion now within the CDU,” he said, referring to the CDU heads of government from Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt, Kai Wegner and Reiner Haseloff, and threatened “a very ugly confrontation with the Junge Union ” at.
The debt brake limits the federal government’s net borrowing to a maximum of 0.35 percent of gross domestic product. However, he can make use of an exception in the event of natural disasters or exceptional emergency situations. For reform, the Basic Law would have to be changed. This requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat. The Federal Constitutional Court recently banned the use of special emergency funds for other purposes at a later date, thereby leaving the federal government with a billion-dollar hole.