The date and place, at least, have already been set. On Tuesday, December 17th, the CDU and CSU will present their joint election program for the federal election to the public in a place that doesn’t look very Saurian, the old telegraph office in Berlin-Mitte. It will be the morning after the vote of no confidence in the Bundestag with which Chancellor Olaf Scholz will clear the way to new elections. Not everything, but a lot of what the Union parties will demand is already becoming apparent. In any case, there has been harmony between the CDU and CSU on migration issues since the Christian Democrats under the leadership of Friedrich Merz switched to the Bavarian line. Things become more difficult when it comes to the issue that, according to general estimates, will dominate the campaign: the poor economic situation and the challenges, to which the successful export nation is exposed. The bad news had recently increased again, starting with job cuts at car companies like VW and suppliers like Bosch. And the previous Economics Minister Robert Habeck put the issue on the agenda of his own industrial conference this week.
The CDU in particular had actually been emphasizing for months that it was well prepared for any new elections; after all, a traffic light shutdown had been expected almost every day since the Federal Constitutional Court’s budget ruling over a year ago. And in principle, the party had always emphasized that it had already done the essential work by adopting its new basic program a year and a half ago. However, it’s not that simple now. On the one hand, this has to do with the double pincer movement that the party is confronted with in the election campaign. On one side is the FDP, which has always signaled that it wants to fight for black-yellow swing voters in a more or less open battle. As a journalist, you could hardly walk through Berlin-Mitte at times without receiving friendly advice from Free Democrats: It might be worth asking Union politicians again to see whether they actually exclude any tax increases in their election program and say a strict no to each one Wanted to enshrine changes to the debt brake. Not a cold-hearted better servant. On the other hand, a weakening SPD that doesn’t want to miss an opportunity is waiting for the business lawyer and former Blackrock supervisory board member Friedrich To make Merz look like a socially cold-hearted higher earner. Surprisingly, the Union is less worried about the Greens, who recently seemed to be in disrepute anyway, but have recently been campaigning more aggressively for former Union voters from the Angela Merkel era with their top candidate Robert Habeck. Another point is added: the fact that the Union is with It is very likely that in just a few months we will actually have to seriously govern the country. This causes the programmatic courage to confess to shrink. This mainly concerns two topics, the debt brake and a possible increase in the top tax rate. Both topics are not new, and both had already been discussed by former Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who died almost a year ago. Shortly before his death, he had warned at a meeting of the Union parliamentary group that the sister parties should not celebrate too lightly about the strict interpretation of the debt brake by the Karlsruhe constitutional judges, which initiated the decline of the traffic light coalition. After all, they would face the same difficulties if they ever took over the reins of government again. External content from YouTube In order to display external content, your revocable consent is required. Personal data from third-party platforms (possibly USA) may be processed. More information. Activate external contentMerz himself opened the gateIt was chancellor candidate Merz himself who opened the gate to the debt brake at a Berlin podium in mid-November. This was later declared a glitch and attributed to the party leader’s tendency to talk uncontrollably. But Merz repeated it on the radio just this week, and now his general secretary Carsten Linnemann is also opening the door a crack. “I completely agree with Friedrich Merz. The debt brake belongs to the CDU,” he says. But he adds: “The debate is about the states. They lack the flexibility that the federal government has with the debt brake.” Because in the CDU it is mainly some of the prime ministers who have been demanding modified debt rules for a long time. And even the head of the MIT economic wing, Gitta Connemann, puts it into perspective: “We are clear on the issue of the debt brake. The brake is not released. There must be no structural softenings.” This leaves the door open for softenings that are not structural in nature. When it comes to tax rates, the party is also building on an idea put forward by its former finance minister. Schäuble had always considered it a mistake that first the FDP, and later also Chancellor Merkel, decided not to increase a single tax rate. In his view, this blocked the scope for reform: Anyone who wanted to straighten the tariff curve and mitigate the steep increase in the tax burden on the middle income groups must also be prepared to moderately increase the top tax rate: Already busted through last year. That was the argument at the time can now be heard again in the party. Schäuble’s former Parliamentary State Secretary Jens Spahn had already spelled this out during the basic program debate last year, with the initial approval of Merz in the F.A.S., who backtracked after resistance from within the party. The top rate could then rise slowly from 42 to 45 percent instead of for a long time as is now the case to remain at 42 percent and to rise suddenly when the “rich tax” was introduced. In return, the separate solidarity surcharge could be eliminated. However, a nuanced debate about tax rates during the election campaign is considered difficult because the matter is too complicated. However, there should no longer be a commitment in the current election program to not raise a single tax rate. Just the promise to relieve the burden on companies and employees overall. The bottom line is that it shouldn’t become more expensive even for high earners. And the workers’ wing supports the idea anyway. “I very much welcomed the factual debate about the tax rate that Jens Spahn initiated last year: to moderately increase the top tax rate, but not as part of a debate about envy, but to achieve relief for the middle class,” says its chairman Dennis Radtke.Taxes Instead of social contributions, however, he has another idea that has not yet gained a majority in the party. It not only affects taxes, but also social contributions. “It’s about relieving the burden on small and medium incomes,” demands Radtke. “We must not evade the demand to put social insurance on a broader footing and to decouple it from the labor factor.” Radtke’s predecessor, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of Social Affairs Karl-Josef Laumann, had put it in a similar way. And the Baden Bundestag member Kai Whittaker has already presented a concept for this. As a consequence, this would mean further increasing the proportion of tax financing. This is not a position that can gain a majority in the Union. But the election program will not contain any other concept of how to counteract the steep rise in social contributions. Just by excluding non-insurance benefits from health insurance and more outpatient procedures, as was said in advance, the costs of the healthcare system will not be tamed. And the party has already rowed back in the summer when it comes to retirement. The stipulation in the basic program that the retirement age should be continuously adjusted to increasing life expectancy will not be reflected in the election program. As business woman Connemann in the F.A.S. After calling for it, employee representative Radtke immediately intervened with the warning about a “pension at 70” – and Merz followed him. “Impositions are not an end in themselves.” “The debate about pensions at 70 is complete nonsense,” Linnemann now also emphasizes. “We haven’t even reached the age of 67 yet, and life expectancy is not increasing at the moment.” Instead, the Union is relying on an “active pension”: Anyone who works past the statutory retirement age should not pay taxes on the first 2,000 euros of their monthly salary . So far, as for all taxpayers, only the first thousand euros are exempt. The social wing goes one step further. “When it comes to pensions, one thing is clear: people don’t have to be afraid of being pensioners under a Union-led government,” says Radtke. Other topics are considered less controversial. “The main line of our election program will be: We must end the traffic light planned economy and return to the social market economy. We want to reverse the heating law, phase out the EEG remuneration gradually, and instead rely entirely on CO2 pricing,” says MIT boss Connemann.More on the topicHere, too, it depends on the small print. “We want to abolish the Habeck heating law,” emphasizes parliamentary group vice-president Jens Spahn. “But we never said that we wanted to abolish the Building Energy Act as a whole. We also want to reduce CO2 emissions, but not with a crowbar.” And when it comes to social issues, he adds: “Impositions are not an end in themselves. The question is: What is necessary to get the economy going again?”
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