The Great Citizens’ Money Debate: Fairness, Reform, and Controversy Unveiled

2024-03-26 13:52:58

The dispute over citizens’ money continues: “Hard but Fair” on Monday evening was regarding the CDU’s proposal to reform the controversial social benefits. The Union had advocated cutting benefits for “total refusers”, i.e. people who can work but don’t want to. The CDU would also give the citizen’s money a new name: the “New Basic Security”. But is that fair for poor people?

This question was discussed by the CDU Bundestag member Philipp Amthor, the Green Party leader, Ricarda Lang and the Saarland Prime Minister Anke Rehlinger (SPD). Also invited were the entrepreneur and president of the association “The Family Businesses” Marie-Christine Ostermann and the boxing world champion Henry Maske, who founded a foundation for children affected by poverty. Later, citizen’s benefit recipient Thomas Wasilewski also joined the group.

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CDU plan for social reform

Philipp Amthor and Ricarda Lang both grew up in socially disadvantaged families, as presenter Louis Klamroth emphasized at the beginning of the show, but each drew different conclusions from their experiences. The discussion became correspondingly controversial: at every opportunity, one person seemed to want to get one over on the other. Any attempts by Klamroth to counteract this failed miserably.

Amthor first explained the CDU’s discomfort with citizens’ money: In his constituency in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania he is constantly asked that social benefits are unfair to working people. Even the name suggests the wrong thing – a service that everyone is entitled to at will. However, citizen’s benefit should only be for those who “find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own”. By allowing “total refusers” to whom this does not apply to exploit the social system, “those who rightly receive citizens’ benefit are discredited,” said Amthor.

Amthor accuses Ricarda Lang of making false statements of fact

Green Party leader Ricarda Lang agreed on one point: “If you can work, you should work.” But the traffic light coalition has long placed emphasis on this by requiring recipients to undergo further training. Then she addressed Amthor: “You yourself are actively working to discredit recipients of citizens’ benefit.” Lang listed: of four million recipients, 20 percent are top-ups, 40 percent are sick or looking following relatives – and of the remaining 40 percent, only 13,000 to 15,000 people would refuse to work. “You are now picking on them and saying that this is the core of the reform,” she scolded Amthor.

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Amthor tried several times to interrupt Ricarda Lang – unsuccessfully. At times both of them talked over each other for several minutes, so that the audience might hardly understand what was being said. Lang denounced the fact that the CDU wanted to abolish protective assets so that people would have to use up their savings from the first day of their unemployment. Moderator Klamroth seemed powerless at times when he tried to intervene. Amthor became snarky: “I can’t help it that Ms. Lang doesn’t read the resolutions!”

By receiving unemployment benefits, citizens ultimately have time to get back to work without touching their savings, said Amthor. The savings, in turn, should be a protective asset depending on the length of time previously worked. Anke Rehlinger (SPD) criticized that the principle “performance should be worth it” was attacked if people had to break down their assets a year following losing their job. “How is this different from the one who didn’t put anything aside?” she asked. “The benefit of having saved money is not worth it.”

“Poverty may be abstract for you, but for me it is everyday life,” says citizen benefit recipient Wasilewski

In the following part of the program, a new guest was introduced, citizen benefit recipient Thomas Wasilewski. Wasilewski, a father of three children, became unable to work twelve years ago and has been receiving social benefits ever since. He can’t remember his last visit to a café; he often doesn’t have enough money at the end of the month – even though he’s worked for 30 years. He observed the same thing in his voluntary work in the soup kitchen in Mönchengladbach: “Last weekend we had 200 people,” he said in a post shown.

In the studio he became personal with the politicians: “When I talk regarding poverty, it might be an abstract thing for you – for me it is everyday life.” When it came to the politically often used term “loss of wealth”, which one “had to come to terms with”. he cynical. “People come to us because they have nothing to eat.” Wasilewski went on to say that there wouldn’t even be enough money for his children’s school books; for this he had to submit an application for additional needs to the social court. “You can’t say that citizen’s money is a sufficient benefit.

Found few compromises: Ricarda Lang (Alliance 90/The Greens, party leader) and Philipp Amthor (CDU, member of the Bundestag)

Source: © WDR/Oliver Ziebe

The politicians themselves suddenly seemed to have little to say in response, on the contrary: all three of them initially did was to nod their heads in concern. Wasilewski also had a jab ready at the CDU, which would not act according to a Christian view of humanity: “The gentleman up there doesn’t say: ‘You’re lazy, you’re hard-working,'” complained Wasilewski. Of the people he met through his work, “there was never a single person who said to me: ‘I don’t want to work’”. However, this impression arises from the rhetoric of CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann.

Amthor defended himself once morest the accusation of populism: “People like you are not the problem of the welfare state at all, but rather need the protection of the welfare state.” In order for social benefits to reach those in need in Wasilewski’s soup kitchen, they should not be misdistributed.

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Then things got heated once more. Wasilewski denounced that the problem was not the standard rates that were too high, but the low wages. This is the only way to get people into the job market. Amthor then directed the debate back to the traffic light’s financial management: “More standard rates, more money for the welfare state, but the money has to come from somewhere,” he said. “And the loss of prosperity that they rightly criticize has to do with the federal government’s poor economic policy.”

SPD politician Rehlinger sharply interjected: “You want to create a welfare state based on your budget. A welfare state cannot afford that.” And Amthor replied, no less excitedly: “You want to create a welfare state like the land of milk and honey!”

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