U-turn at the CDU: Suddenly no desire to make cuts anymore

Now the good Karin Prien is also defying. I have long thought it was a matter of time before someone among the CDU members in the cabinet said: If the others no longer have to save, I don't want to save any more!

And now the family minister actually declared that she did not want to implement the reforms, i.e. cuts, in parental allowance as previously discussed. Prien said to the regional newspaper group Editorial Network Germany (RND) that “especially after the debates and conversations of the summer” she would like to “look again at whether the savings measures for parental allowance are effective and justified to this extent”. She no longer wants to fight for a reduction in parental allowance from 14 to 12 months. Prien would like to “see what savings we can achieve with a more moderate reform”.

This sounds like a friendly farewell to savings goals. Spend less – always happy, but in a way that suits you. And the minister wasn't finished yet: capping maintenance advances for single mothers of teenagers is clearly no longer important to her. At least not as long as things like the fuel discount are possible: they are expensive, untargeted and have a short-term effect at best. “I understand if people find it unfair that there is money for this while we are cutting back on maintenance advances.”

This is the second understandable statement from the Union's series on the subject of justice. The first was Friedrich Merz's statement that the coexistence of private and statutory health insurance “triggers a significant problem in the population's sense of justice.” After excited inquiries, the Chancellery did not want this to be understood as an announcement of a system change to citizens' insurance.

There are two possible interpretations: Either Prien, with her austerity sabotage, brings the general, but ultimately contained, CDU mutiny against Merz into the federal government. At least this is the impression that the RND interview conveys. Or, on the contrary, Prien has agreed on her about-face with Merz: From now on, more leniency, people need a few signals that it's not always just against them!

Now somehow anything seems possible with the CDU at the moment; I'm still waiting for someone to commit to anarchy there. But perhaps the Union has now come to the conclusion that it cannot possibly continue as before after the recent election results. And with the completely over-the-top campaign against the Left Party, it is now just giving itself a few days of breathing space (and improving its own working atmosphere) to realign government business.

This is also how one could understand the small care compromise that CDU Health Minister Carsten Linnemann pushed through the cabinet on Wednesday: As a sign of the new leniency, relatively high earners and those without children will be burdened, but at least no caring relatives will be punished.

I liked Linnemann's sentence recently in the “Report from Berlin”: “You can make cuts, but you can also say: We are creating truth in the balance sheet.” What he meant was that he first wanted the Corona aid back from the finance minister before he made further cuts in care. But “balance sheet truth instead of shortcuts” is something you can work with. For example: We all tell ourselves the truth, that we need more money and that the wealthy contribute too little to the balance sheet. How about it? The coalition must pass the next budget in November.