Today the individual departments should report their budgets for 2025 to Finance Minister Lindner. The deadline was postponed by two weeks. There are some construction sites: in pensions, basic child welfare and defense.
At the very beginning of their political cooperation, the SPD, Greens and FDP wanted to be a progressive coalition. But progress, it seems, is increasingly being slowed down at traffic lights by arguments about the right path.
Christian Lindner, Federal Finance Minister and FDP leader, described it in the ARD show Caren Miosga like this: “Every day I feel the limits we reach because there are very different views on how people want to live, how the economy works, what society needs.”
Largest single budget in Ministry of Labor
Hubertus Heil, for example, the Federal Minister of Labor, is in control of by far the largest individual budget: 175 billion euros, or more than a third of the entire federal budget, is covered by the Labor Minister’s department. The SPD politician is convinced that society needs, above all, reliability in social policy. He therefore categorically rules out cuts in the pension system.
At a joint press conference with Christian Lindner on the federal government’s planned pension package, Heil said: “This principle of lifetime achievement must be reliable, whether someone was born in 1954 or 1995. The people who work hard in Germany, who pay contributions today, must also be in “We will be able to rely on the statutory pension in the future.”
Savings appeal for salvation
This promise of salvation is one of the major construction sites for Lindner’s budget: the federal subsidy to the pension fund has increased by almost 20 billion euros in the last five years alone. It covers politically desired pension insurance benefits for which the contribution payers’ income is not sufficient: the mother’s pension, child-care leave, the basic pension.
All of this is becoming more and more expensive, also because of the aging society. Lindner formulates his appeal to Heil for austerity all the more urgently: “Even a convinced social democrat must recognize that if he wants to obtain new, additional funds for his projects, the growth engine must first be turned on again.”
Lindner proposes a moratorium on social projects
But where will the money come from for economic stimulus programs – or for the tax cuts that Lindner actually considers desirable? He himself has already proposed a moratorium on new social projects. This creates scope for the state’s other tasks.
At present, Lindner’s main focus is likely to be on stimulating the structurally weak growth of the German economy. Most recently, his “Growth Opportunities Act”, which provided for investment aid and tax relief for companies, was reduced by the states in the Federal Council to a fraction of the original volume. The finance ministers of the federal states feared a loss of revenue.
Long argument about that Basic child protection
The second construction site in the budget negotiations is likely to be basic child security. The Green Family Minister Lisa Paus wants the federal government to combine benefits for children – and pay them out automatically, without the need for complicated application procedures.
Paus has been arguing with Lindner for a long time about how much the project costs and how many additional positions are needed for the administrative implementation. Nevertheless, she is optimistic: “Christian Lindner, the Chancellor and I negotiated the law together and then passed it together in the cabinet. I am confident that because we have now worked so intensively on it, we will now quickly reach a result .”
Deadline extended by 14 days
However, there can be no talk of “quickly” at the moment. The deadline by which all individual departments must report their budgets to Lindner has just been extended by 14 days.
The Federal Minister of Finance is using the time to once again fundamentally criticize the basic child welfare project. Because children are left behind, said Lindner ARDexists especially in migrant families: “If you want to solve the problem of child poverty, then you make sure that the parents get language training and a job, and you improve daycare provision and make the schools better.”
Loosen the debt brake?
The Bundeswehr also needs to improve – the third construction site. Defense funding needs continue to rise; especially when the special fund is spent in 2028 and NATO’s two percent target must be achieved from the regular federal budget.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius spoke on the ZDF program “What now…?” from what he expects: a distribution battle. “The most beautiful digital libraries and the most beautiful bicycle highways are of no use to us if we are under attack and are unable to defend ourselves. It’s about setting priorities. Yes, there will have to be cuts in the budget if we want to guarantee defense .”
It would therefore also be conceivable for Pistorius to loosen the debt brake to finance the Bundeswehr and civil defense – another topic on which Lindner will have more than a say.
15 to 20 billion euros could be missing
Nobody has yet officially confirmed how high the “shortfall” is in Lindner’s budget planning for the coming year – that is, the amount that lies between tax revenue plus permitted borrowing and the ministries’ spending wishes. Observers suspect it will probably be 15 to 20 billion euros.
The preparation of a federal budget for the 2025 election year could therefore become a breaking point for a coalition that was actually committed to progress.
Lothar Lenz, ARD Berlin, tagesschau, April 18, 2024 5:39 p.m