Social affairs - Calls for a stop to the Citizen's Income Plus
The sharp increase in the Citizen's Income at the start of 2024 is causing discord within the CDU/CSU. The social wing is resisting calls from the party leaders to stop the increase. CSU leader Markus Söder and leading FDP politicians, on the other hand, are calling for the twelve percent increase to be reversed.
On January 1, 2024, the more than five million recipients of citizen's income are to receive an average of around 12 percent more money - single people will then receive 563 euros. In contrast to previous adjustments, inflation, which had risen sharply for months, was taken more into account in the calculation for 2024 due to a change in the rules.
Söder: "Balance between support and demands is not right"
"The traffic light must postpone the increase planned for January by one year and completely restart it," Bavarian Minister President Söder told Stern magazine. "There needs to be more motivation to go to work. That is why we will introduce an initiative in the Bundesrat for a general overhaul of the citizens' allowance. Because the balance between encouraging and demanding is not right," said Söder, explaining the initiative. "People who work must clearly receive more than those who don't. That's why we need changes."
According to Secretary General Carsten Linnemann, the CDU wants to significantly reduce the citizen's allowance for young adults who are able to work if they turn down offers of work or training if they come to power. It is unacceptable that 600,000 young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are neither working nor in training," argued Linnemann in the "Tagesspiegel" (Monday). "Anyone who could work at a young age, but deliberately does not and takes advantage of the system, should expect a 50 percent or more cut instead of a 30 percent cut," he said.
FDP Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai called for the significant increase in the citizen's income to be reversed. "Every third euro spent by the federal government goes on social spending. That is no longer possible," Djir-Sarai told Bild am Sonntag. "That is why it is now urgently necessary to reassess the citizen's income. The planned increase on January 1 is no longer appropriate," he added. It was unacceptable for the government to increase the Citizen's Income by twelve percent in times of tight budgets and with the lowest inflation since 2021. Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) must stop the planned increase, he said. "Anything else is also unacceptable to the working population," explained Djir-Sarai.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner has named the area of social affairs with the citizens' allowance as one of three areas to plug gaps in the budget for 2024. With regard to the citizen's income, the FDP leader pointed out in the Funke media group newspapers that the inflation rate is developing much better than forecast when the standard rate was set for 2024. Inflation had fallen to 3.2 percent in November - the planned increase in citizens' income from January is still based on inflation of 9.9 percent, as FDP social affairs expert Pascal Kober had explained.
Social Minister Heil had already rejected calls to suspend the increase. The minister points to the mechanism that the sharp increase is due to this year's high inflation. However, if inflation falls again in 2024, the subsequent increase in citizens' benefits will be "relatively meagre", the minister recently predicted.
CDU social wing warns: don't unsettle people
The chairman of the CDU employees' association CDA, Karl-Josef Laumann, also opposed canceling the increase in the citizen's allowance planned for the beginning of 2024. "There was an urgent need to adjust the standard rates for the citizen's allowance," the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of Social Affairs told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND). He added that it was wrong to only criticize social benefits in the current budget situation. "Nobody should think that the CDU is not on the side of the little people," warned Laumann.
CDA Vice Chairman Christian Bäumler also emphasized: "The demand for social cuts in Germany is unsettling people and endangering social peace. A policy that makes the poor ever poorer and the rich ever richer is not compatible with the Christian view of humanity," warned Bäumler. He warned against destroying the spiritual foundations of the Union with "welfare state polemics".
No citizens' allowance for newly arrived Ukrainian refugees?
There is another demand from the CDU/CSU. Söder wants a stop to citizen's allowance payments to newly arriving Ukrainian refugees. "It would not be legal to cancel something retroactively. But we must change course for all new cases," said the CSU politician. "And for all other new arrivals, social benefits should only be granted after five years instead of 18 months."
Alexander Throm, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group's domestic policy spokesperson, also spoke out in favor of ending the payment of citizens' benefits to newly arrived refugees from Ukraine. "The fact that the war refugees from Ukraine are all receiving citizen's allowance immediately was well-intentioned by everyone involved when it was decided," the CDU member of parliament told the German Press Agency. However, the decision had proved to be counterproductive as far as the willingness to take up work was concerned.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz warned on the ARD program "Bericht aus Berlin" that a greater distinction should be made between contribution-financed wage replacement benefits and tax-financed social benefits. "I am even in favor of those who receive unemployment benefits, for example, perhaps even receiving higher benefits in the first few months so that they can secure their standard of living."
According to Merz, the inflation rate is significantly lower than assumed at the start of the year. That is why the 12.6 percent increase that Minister Heil is now planning is "simply too much when you consider that those who receive it should have an incentive to enter the job market as social benefits".
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Source: www.stern.de
