St. Nicholas is a household horror

The capital - St. Nicholas is a household horror

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Dear readers,

Unfortunately, I can't spare you the following opening sentence on December 6: When the coalition partners from the SPD, Greens and FDP looked into their shoes this morning, there was still no new budget inside. Even the nuts that still need to be cracked were not brought to the government by Santa Claus, but were thrown at the feet of Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck and Christian Lindner three weeks ago by the Federal Constitutional Court.

When I was a little boy, Santa Claus used to come to our house. I had to sing a song to get presents and not be put in the sack. When I was about five years old, I chose the song "Mama" by Heintje, a child star from Holland who, at the end of the 1960s, was already singing the German that made Rudi Carrell famous decades later, and who probably no one among my young Berlin colleagues still knows.

So I sang, waving my arms back and forth to the rhythm and finally began to cry in a mixture of emotion about the song and fear of Santa Claus. There's a Super 8 film of it, but I'm keeping it under wraps as long as I still want to be taken a little seriously as a political journalist, even though the film would fit in well with the RTL program.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because the sack of Santa Claus I escaped from perfectly symbolizes the problem of the coalition. For years, Olaf Scholz acted like a saint, presenting one gift after another, first as Finance Minister and then as Chancellor. Nothing was too expensive, nothing was unaffordable. Bazooka and Doppelwumms have never met the requirements for child-friendly toys, but it was only the Federal Constitutional Court that finally imposed rigorous restrictions on the use of these fiscal miracle weapons.

Now the SPD, Greens and FDP have to cobble together a new budget, which they have so far failed to do. The Chancellor is not Santa Claus, and his coalition friends are not called Ruprecht or Krampus, but Robert and Christian, which is why Scholz cannot push them around like servants at will. Incidentally, if the three of them don't reach an agreement soon, they can - to stay with the metaphor - hit the sack.

We have dealt with many aspects of the budget crisis over the past few days. If you want to catch up on the latest developments, I recommend this overview, which may have survived the night but has lost none of its topicality. And if you want to know what could happen if nothing happens between the three coalition leaders, you've come to the right place.

A perennial topic in the discussions about budget cuts was the citizens' income. My colleague Jan Rosenkranz, who is actually a very sociable person, was so annoyed by this debate that he allowed himself a digital outburst of anger, which you can find here.

And my colleague Lisa Becke, who is as afraid of any socio-political issue, no matter how complicated, as I am of Santa Claus, has written down very clearly why there is nothing more to be gained from the Citizen's Income for the 2024 budget anyway. She also spoke to economist Achim Truger about why cuts to social spending may help the coalition to patch up budget holes, but could also harm the economy.

If you're still in the mood after all these reflections, you can read my column in which I look at the question of why Christian Lindner doesn't use any word as sparingly as the word save.

PERSON OF THE WEEK

The situation is particularly tricky for Olaf Scholz because not only will he have been in office for two years to the day next Friday, but at the SPD party conference he will also be meeting with comrades who are no longer prepared to follow him willingly in the face of poor poll ratings. One person who is likely to attack the chancellor hard is the new Juso chairman Philipp Türmer, who believes that Scholz should now remember his election promise of more respect. My colleague Florian Schillat trudged through the Berlin snow with Türmer and got to know the chancellor's tormenting spirit better:

AND OTHERWISE?

Nikolaus is left out. Well, not quite yet, but on December 6, the Left Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag disbanded. The MPs continue to sit in the plenary - the larger group around Dietmar Bartsch, the smaller group around Sahra Wagenknecht - but they no longer want to have anything to do with each other. My colleague Miriam Hollstein has researched how such a parliamentary group is dissolved and who pays for it.

ALL MY FAVORITES

Your highlight of the week...

... was the interview that my colleagues Gregor Peter Schmitz and Veit Medick conducted with Markus Söder.

The Bavarian Minister President and CSU leader must be feeling a bit like Munich motorists after the heavy snowfall of the past few days in the debate on the CDU/CSU's candidate for chancellor: blocked. His own chances are not so good at the moment, but in the interview you can read about the skills Söder expects from a suitable candidate for chancellor. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether he means himself after all.

My highlight of the week...

... was Markus Söder again - in his social media greeting for the first Advent. You can see the Bavarian Minister President lighting a candle and making himself comfortable in an armchair with a mug. However, the real eye-catcher is the huge tent with Christmas motifs that Söder is wearing like others wear a sweater. Oh, that 's a sweater? Oh, sorry!

Schönen 1. #Advent! Die gemütlichste Zeit des Jahres beginnt - auch bei mir 😉 Tragt ihr auch gerne Weihnachtspullis? pic.twitter.com/GhnE0p72lM

— Markus Söder (@Markus_Soeder) December 3, 2023

Have a good week!

Nicolaus Fried

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