As of: March 10, 2024, 11:04 a.m
By: Hannes Niemeyer
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Planning for the coming federal budget is already underway.
Politicians fear cuts in social benefits.
Labor Minister Heil is now making a promise about this.
Berlin – The traffic light government got the federal budget for 2024 put together with difficulty.
But not without some internal stress.
While the immediate consequences such as the farmers' protests after the cut in agricultural diesel subsidies or the Bundestag dispute over citizens' money are still causing a stir, a look at future budgets also promises many problems.
The traffic light is already considering where savings can be made in the consultations on the 2025 federal budget.
In the future, there will also be a big focus on the expiry of the Bundeswehr special fund in 2028 in a global political phase in which rearmament and investment in the Bundeswehr seem to be an unavoidable topic.
From then on, Olaf Scholz wants to cover defense spending from the budget.
At the same time, they want to continue to maintain the debt brake.
However, this raises the question: Where should we save then?
Citizens' money and social benefits are opposed to armaments - where can savings be made in the 2025 budget?
The Union, for example, wants to cut citizens' money.
The traffic light resists this.
In general, however, there are already fears in politics that investments in defense, for example, could in the long term come at the expense of the welfare state.
There was even talk of armaments or pensions.
Top economist Clemens Fuest also recently took away the illusion from top traffic light politicians like Ricarda Lang and Christian Lindner on TV that maintaining defense spending without making savings, for example in social areas, was also feasible.
Saving on social benefits?
Not if Labor Minister Hubertus Heil has his way.
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Hubertus Heil is now countering such concerns.
The SPD labor minister, who plans to expand the German pension system based on the Austrian model, rejects cuts in social benefits despite the difficult budget situation.
“We will not cut any services that citizens are entitled to,” said the SPD politician to the
Tagesspiegel
with a view to the discussions for the 2025 federal budget.
Heil gives a social benefit guarantee for the household – but announces: “We can’t afford everything”
“Everyone knows that we can’t afford everything and that we have to set budgetary priorities,” emphasized Heil.
However, he is firmly convinced that social security cannot be taken away from people in times of crisis.
The Minister of Social Affairs admitted that we need to talk about “how targeted certain benefits are.” “But again: there will be no cuts in social security with me,” Heil made clear.
Negotiations on the budget for 2025 have begun in the federal government.
The Ministry of Finance called on all departments on Thursday to make suggestions for savings.
The ministries' plans should be available by April 19th.
“It will require a joint effort by the federal government to resolve the need for action in the federal budget,” says a letter from Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) to his cabinet colleagues.
The need for action describes a billion-dollar gap, which, according to the Ministry of Finance, amounts to a double-digit billion amount even without additional requests.
The federal budget for 2025 is due to be approved by the cabinet at the beginning of July.
Then it’s the Bundestag’s turn.
The budget is usually finally passed in December.
In the meantime, it is already certain that pensions will increase in the summer.
Minister Heil has already given a forecast of how much pensions could rise in 2024.
(han/dpa)