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Photo: TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP
Harder days are coming.
Food and energy prices have already skyrocketed and there is no end in sight.
Many people are in danger of slipping into poverty, many poor of slipping into nothingness.
In such difficult times, a government is particularly needed to prevent the worst from happening.
It is clear that there will have to be massive aid programs: for gas suppliers, for individual branches of industry, but also for citizens, especially for poor people.
It shouldn't be a question of the wallet whether people will spend the coming winter at a dignified room temperature.
These support programs will cost tens of billions of euros, money that the federal government does not actually have.
So savings have to be made elsewhere or new sources of income have to be tapped.
An obvious example would be to increase the top tax rate.
A wealth tax could also be introduced.
Or a rich solo.
Because it has been proven that the wealthy not only get through crises of all kinds better, but sometimes even emerge from them even richer.
But the obvious thing is not the thing of this federal government.
She has found another trick where money can be saved: with the long-term unemployed, the poorest in society.
Since 2019 there has been the so-called social labor market with the Participation Opportunities Act, which creates subsidized jobs for people who have been unemployed for at least six years.
For people who no longer have a realistic chance on the regular job market, for example because they suffer from mental health problems.
It is a program that aims to give those who have been left behind in this country a chance to regain their dignity and participate.
Now the "benefits for integration into work" are to be reduced by more than 600 million euros.
This is what the draft budget for the coming year, which has already been coordinated with the SPD-led Chancellery and the SPD-led Labor Ministry, provides for.
There could be a double misunderstanding here.
The SPD in particular had promised that Hartz IV would be overcome.
Almost everyone thought it was meant to be more social, not anti-social.
And then it was Olaf Scholz, who used one word to promote himself as Chancellor: "Respect!" It was on many election posters and was the key word in his campaign.
What was missing back then were three letters: l, o and s. Because that is the planned cut for the long-term unemployed: not just instinctive, but also disrespectful.
Especially at a time when the government is pouring out 100 billion as a “Bundeswehr special fund”.
While one has so far been waiting in vain for the »Social Peace Special Fund«.
The question is whether this government will perhaps still realize what a devastating signal it is sending with the planned cuts in times that are already rough.
Perhaps the chancellor and finance minister can chat again this weekend on the sidelines of Christian Lindner's wedding about the cutback plans.
With a glass of champagne in the Sylt Sansibar.