Braun has 'very bad gut feeling'
After the political agreement with Chancellor Scholz and Economy Minister Habeck, Finance Minister Lindner presented the budget proposal for the coming year in the afternoon. CDU budget politician Helge Braun has doubts about the constitutionality.
The chairman of the Budget Committee of the Bundestag, Helge Braun, has major concerns about the budget proposal of the federal government for 2025. He said, "I have a very bad feeling about what the Finance Minister (Christian Lindner) is doing there," the CDU politician stated in the RBB24-Inforadio.
When asked if billion-dollar subsidies for the railway and the Autobahn agency could be replaced by loans so that the money is not counted towards the debt brake, he criticized: "He's on a cliff again, right at the edge of the constitutional limit." The long-contested budget proposal is supposed to be presented to the cabinet today. Criticism due to open questions
Basically, Braun objected that the expenditures were very low and the revenues very high. "If we are then in the year 2025 and... reality catches up with us, the risk is that the gap will be even larger." He also warned: "If you have a 17-billion-euro gap and you haven't said where you're saving, then you'll have to go back to the points where you promised money during the year." He considers it possible that funding programs could be suddenly stopped.
The budget contains a so-called global under-expenditure of 17 billion Euro. The federal government is betting on this that the ministries will not spend the entire amount in that year. The procedure is common, but the amount is very high. In the 17 billion Euro, however, there are also 8 billion Euro for whose financing the federal government already has an idea. Among other things, money that the KfW development bank did not use for the gas price brake could flow back to the federal budget. Whether this is constitutionally sound is still being checked.
Helge Braun, a Union fraction member and CDU budget politician, expressed uncertainty about the constitutionality of the budget proposal presented by Christian Lindner, the Federal Finance Minister, due to its domestic policy aspects. In the union-led traffic coalition, Helge Braun raised concerns about substituting billion-dollar subsidies for railway and Autobahn agency with loans, potentially violating the debt brake.
