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Olaf Scholz at the start of the SPD election campaign in Cuxhaven
Photo: Sina Schuldt / dpa
From next year, more people should be able to apply for housing benefit.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised this on Friday evening at the start of his party's election campaign in Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, and referred to the energy crisis.
“We think a lot more people should get that, and there has to be a heating cost component as well.
And we are doing such a reform at the beginning of next year," said the SPD politician.
In Lower Saxony, the state parliament will be re-elected on October 9th.
Scholz also promised the introduction of the planned citizens' allowance at the turn of the year.
“We have already agreed: the citizens’ allowance, which we have been so committed to, will come at the turn of the year,” said Scholz.
The introduction of citizen income, which is to replace Hartz IV, is one of the most important socio-political projects of the traffic light coalition.
The Social Democrat also announced tax relief.
This time, pensioners and students should also benefit from the relief.
Before Scholz, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) had already announced the expansion of housing benefits from 2023 as part of a third relief package.
"The housing benefit in its reformed form should also reach people with low incomes and include people who live in their own homes with a small pension," Lindner recently told the "Südkurier".
Klingbeil promotes the excess profit tax
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil has also announced that pensioners will benefit from the government's new relief package.
»We have to correct a mistake: we forgot pensioners.
There has to be something for them now," said Klingbeil at the start of the election campaign in Cuxhaven, referring to the first two relief packages.
The SPD leader is also counting on the FDP in the traffic light government giving up its resistance to an excess profit tax.
For a limited period of time, the billions in profits that some companies would have from the shortage of energy and skyrocketing energy prices would have to be taxed.
"That's what we're proposing." He got to know FDP leader and finance minister Christian Lindner as a person "who is open to good arguments."
mgo/dpa/Reuters