It’s just a small group standing in front of the Reichstag building early in the morning. On a large poster are the words: “New basic security – old problem. Sanctions cost housing. Organized tax fraud costs billions.” They are protesting against that planned basic securitywhich the Bundestag will discuss in first reading on Thursday. The debate shows that there is resistance to the law not only outside.
Labor Minister Bärbel Bas makes the first mark of the debate in the plenary session. The SPD co-leader defends the tightening of citizens’ money and the new basic security. This is needed to create “new opportunities”. The law is a signal against abuse of social benefits. Bas is campaigning for support for the law.
Prominent criticism came from the former Berlin Juso chairwoman Annika Klose in the debate. She says she can no longer stand “the way people who receive public benefits are being picked on.” She sees the statements as a “fact-free narrative that deliberately ignores reality.” Klose even once again aggressively defended citizens’ money: it was important and a necessary law.
At the end of her speech, she somewhat out of necessity follows her party’s line and says that the SPD is not abolishing citizens’ money, but rather “further developing it.” Klose describes planned sanctions such as the cancellation of all salaries as “populist bullshit”. She announced that Parliament would “take another look” at the corresponding regulations from Bas’ draft law.
Populist bullshit
Annika Klose, SPD, about the planned total sanctions
There was already resistance to the new basic security in the SPD in December. At the same time, an attempt is being made in the party Members’ petition against the planned tightening measures to initiate.
Tougher sanctions
According to the plans for basic security, benefit recipients should no longer receive any money if they miss three invitations to an appointment at the job center. The assumption of housing costs can also be canceled. However, the mentally ill should be protected from this, both the Union and the SPD emphasized again in the Bundestag. In addition, the beneficiaries’ own assets should be able to be tapped more quickly before the basic security benefits flow.
The Union emphasizes in the Bundestag that the reform brings back the maxim of “promoting and demanding”. CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann sees the law as justice for those “who support the welfare state with taxes”.
Linnemann does not mention in the Bundestag the billions of euros in cost savings that are supposedly possible with the reform, with which the Union campaigned last year. According to the draft law, it should now be just 69 million euros in 2027.
Sharp criticism from the opposition
The Greens and the Left are therefore accusing the Union of lying. Timon Dzienus from the Greens speaks of a shabby campaign by the Union against those receiving citizens’ benefit. There is no evidence of social fraud. For real savings, he calls for tax evaders to be taken care of.
Heidi Reichinnek, the parliamentary group leader of the Left, calls for a similar approach. She describes the planned changes as the “starting signal for the biggest attack that the welfare state has experienced”: The CDU’s smear campaign has led to the majority of people finding the citizen’s benefit to be unfair.
The AfD, on the other hand, welcomes the move. MP Gerit Huy recognizes parallels to her own concept of “activating basic security”. Huy particularly welcomes the stricter sanctions and the priority of mediation. However, the AfD’s draft does not go far enough.