analysis
Guardian of Money
That is why the finance minister’s credibility is at stake
With the formal change to government, Christian Lindner has apparently changed his attitude towards the budget.
© Michael Kappeler / DPA
As an opposition member, Christian Lindner sharply criticized the Groko’s monetary policy. Now he’s switched sides.
It seems as if the new government has also brought about a change in character. Christian Lindner, FDP member and new finance minister, had recently not only switched from the opposition bank to the government bank. He and his party are about to move within the plenary hall of the Bundestag. For him and the Liberals, geographically speaking, things go in the middle, while the CDU becomes the AfD’s new seat neighbor. It is the first change of seat in the history of the Bundestag.
But these are all just formalities peppered with symbols. The content orientation is much more important. Something has changed there too. It’s about 60 billion euros, which actually come from the fund for special corona loans. The sum has not yet been called. The money is now to be reallocated into a climate investment fund. There the money can be used longer, so the argument supported by Lindner among others.
A year ago, Lindner’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz, announced a similar plan. 60 billion euros of additional debt should be included for the supplementary budget. The FDP was arguably the sharpest critic. At that time, Lindner described Scholz’s project as a “new debt hammer”. FDP parliamentary group vice-president Christian Dürr expresses himself similarly: “Debt without meaning or understanding, that is the motto of this coalition.” For a short time the Liberals even considered taking constitutional action against the decision. The government would unnecessarily inflate the supplementary budget.
Criticism from AfD and Union
In the role of the opposition politician, one would have expected a similar rhetorical fireworks display from Christian Lindner and his party colleagues. But that didn’t happen this time. Scholz, who had restarted the plan for the new supplementary budget, defended the new finance minister with great seriousness. And that although this is the second supplementary budget this year and a quarter of the money is expected to come from the new debt planned by the GroKo for 2021.
There has already been criticism of the project – as expected – from the AfD and the recently opposed Christian Democrats. The AfD described the decision as “sleight of hand” and evaluates this as evidence for the “fall-over party FDP”. The Union even wants to submit the supplementary budget to the Federal Constitutional Court for the norm control bill, as the CDU MP Thomas Heimann announced.
Lindner countered that it was the way out of the crisis, the way to economic success. “Not only do the people need a booster, but also economic development,” he said on Thursday in the first parliamentary debate on the supplementary budget. It is about responsibility for future generations, their chances of freedom. It is not an arbitrary decision that the money should flow into a climate investment fund. Lindner argues with a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court. In the spring, it declared the coalition’s climate protection policy to be insufficient for future generations.
Instead of admitting that the liberals in the three-party constellation with the Greens and the SPD have to make compromises, Lindner uses his rhetorical talent. He justifies his U-turn with the current even more dramatic economic situation.
Not only Lindner has a credibility problem
Whether the traffic light can enforce the supplementary budget is up to the Federal Constitutional Court. Criticism of the plans was expressed not only by the Union and AfD, but also by the Federal Audit Office.
The CDU politician Helge Braun said immediately before a Bundestag debate on Deutschlandfunk: “This will be a very serious debate today because we are very worried. Because that is a very fundamental break with the budgetary solidity in Germany that we are currently experiencing . ” To what extent this criticism should be taken seriously is questionable. Because like Lindner, the CDU has also made a change. Now she is criticizing a policy for which she herself was responsible some time ago. Christian Lindner is not the only one who has to grapple with the credibility problem.
sources: “The mirror“, daily News, FDP parliamentary group, AFP, DPA