Germany: Lindner announces the lifting of the debt brake

Christian Lindner used to demand: “It would be better to have new elections than new debts.” Today he wants to retroactively dismantle the debt brake for 2023. How does he justify this?

Berlin - Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) has announced that he will subsequently suspend the debt brake for 2023 . A corresponding supplementary budget is to be presented to the federal cabinet next Wednesday. He did not say what “emergency situation” the FDP leader intended to use to justify this.

With this trick, the federal government can drastically increase new debt again this year. Lindner justified the step by saying that he wanted to “clear the air” for 2023 before the budget for 2024 was decided. The government canceled discussions on this on Wednesday.

Lindner campaigned against taking on debt
According to his own statements, the finance minister wants to put the expenditure for the electricity and gas price cap on a “constitutionally secure basis”. These were paid from the 200 billion euro “economic stabilization fund”, which, according to experts, is also affected by the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling on the unconstitutionality of Economics Minister Habeck’s 60 billion euro climate fund.

“We are now drawing the conclusions from this,” said the FDP politician in a hastily called press conference in which he did not use the word “debt brake”. The ruling in Karlsruhe deprives the traffic light coalition of hundreds of billions of euros, which should be taken out as loans or redistributed in the coming years.

As an FDP politician, Lindner had repeatedly spoken out against taking on new debt. For the 2012 state elections, as his party's top candidate at the time, he posted a poster: "Better new elections than new debts."

Source: Junge Freiheit