Family Minister Paus has to save – and starts with parental allowance for higher-earning couples. The coalition partner FDP does not like that at all. And the minister is not really happy either.
No more talking badly about each other, no longer unsettling people with public disputes – that was the firm intention of the traffic light coalition. However, it doesn’t seem to last very long. Because now the FDP and the Greens are once again clashing on the open stage.
This time with parental allowance: FDP Vice-President Johannes Vogel describes Family Minister Lisa Paus’ plan to limit the group of those entitled to parental allowance as “unconvincing”. “Lisa Paus is not social affairs minister, but family minister,” complains the FDP politician in common Morning magazine from ARD and ZDF. And finally, it’s about equality and a family policy goal – namely that “young couples from the middle of society can afford to have children”.
Strong criticism from the Union
Green politician Paus, on the other hand, justifies herself by saying that almost all ministries have had savings targets imposed by an FDP man, namely Finance Minister Christian Lindner – including hers. “I then just selected the least bad solutions from the worst ones,” explained Paus on RTL/NTV.
In fact, in a letter to the family department, the Ministry of Finance had called for what it called a “spending-reducing reform of parental allowance” in order to save half a billion euros. The Greens now want to achieve this by eliminating parental allowance for higher-income couples – namely for those who together have more than 150,000 euros per year in taxable income. Converted to gross, this means: From around 180,000 euros, the performance would be capped. The family minister receives support from the social association VdK: It is better to start with high earners than to cut parental allowance for everyone, says VdK boss Verena Bentele.
Criticism of the Paus plans, on the other hand, has come from the Union and from the coalition partner FDP. A young couple, such as an engineer and a teacher, says FDP Vice Vogel, could ultimately only be faced with bad decisions: “For example, before the decision that only the woman would stay at home again. Or that she wouldn’t take her life can do more because the woman is the higher earner in an area where we talk about the middle of society.”
No fairer way out of the austerity constraints?
The question of whether a couple with an annual gross income of 180,000 euros is actually to be located in the “middle of society” is already being intensively discussed. The fact is, however, that parental allowance was originally devised to create incentives for men to take care of newborn children. But since they still earn more on average, young couples are at risk of falling back into old role models if support is lost, according to the criticism: “It’s true, that’s not the best measure in terms of equality policy,” admits the minister herself.
According to her own statements, however, she sees no fairer way out of the austerity constraints. How long the FDP and the Greens publicly grapple with this issue is another, quite significant question. Because the lesson from the heating dispute is actually: Zoff on the open stage drives the traffic light blood pressure up – and the polls in the basement.