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The next few years will be bleak for all friends of expensive election gifts.
No matter which party is then in government: There will be nothing.
At least a look at the benchmarks for the federal budget for 2022 and medium-term financial planning up to 2025, presented by SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz and approved by the cabinet, does not allow any other conclusion.
“Great budgetary discipline is essential,” says the warning in the more than 100-page paper that was passed by the cabinet.
In view of the ongoing pandemic, the year 2022 will still be considered an exceptional year in which the debt brake will remain suspended.
The federal government is planning another 81.5 billion euros in additional debt for 2022.
But then the orgy of debt should come to an end, which provides for additional federal loans of 450 billion euros within three years.
From 2023, the debt brake set out in the Basic Law will apply again.
Then income and expenditure have to be largely balanced.
How this is to be done is a mystery.
Source: WORLD infographic
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Because in the plans from Scholz's ministry there is a huge gap in funding for the years 2023 to 2025.
A good 38 billion euros are missing.
The sum is described using budgetary placeholders such as “need for action” and “global under expenditure”.
If you take it very carefully, the gap even increases to 116 billion euros.
The only reason the true extent is not obvious to date is that it was already assumed in the plans that the federal government will take on at least as much new debt even after the Corona crisis as is allowed despite the brake being set again.
In addition, the budget experts have already distributed the reserve of a good 48 billion euros built up in the pre-crisis years between 2023 and 2024.
Criticism for this comes not only from the opposition.
Even the coalition partners CDU and CSU are warned that there are some unpleasant surprises in the numbers.
"The actual expenditure and deficits are significantly higher than those shown in the benchmarks," says Eckhardt Rehberg, the Union's budgetary spokesman.
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The effort to stabilize social security contributions has not yet been taken into account.
For example, the Ministry of Health has already registered higher federal subsidies for statutory health and long-term care insurance, but this does not appear in the key figures.
"After the election, the new coalition will have to make a comprehensive cash fall," Rehberg is certain.
The repayment will come soon
The same applies to the social security funds as to many other state expenditures: If the federal government cannot fill the holes with the available funds, benefits must be reduced or income increased.
The latter would result in rising contributions and higher taxes - which would be the opposite of election gifts.
And the problem will only worsen in the second half of this decade.
Because then the crisis costs have to be paid off.
The law stipulates that additional loans taken out during an exceptional emergency must be repaid in fixed installments over a fixed period of time.
Source: WORLD infographic
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The repayment obligations for new debt in the crisis years 2020 to 2022 will initially amount to a bearable two billion euros per year from 2023, but according to the budget they will rise to 18.9 billion euros from 2026 - this amount will be renewed every year until 2042 due.
This means that from 2026 the federal government will inevitably have to rely on budget surpluses so that it can meet its repayment obligations.
Because as the experts at the Ministry of Finance have already calculated, the necessary repayment then makes up 0.49 percent of the annual economic output.
However, the debt brake only allows a net borrowing of 0.35 percent per year.
Corona debts cannot be settled with new debts alone.
Olaf Scholz is meanwhile exercising optimism.
His hope is that the economy will recover quickly after the pandemic and that tax revenues will soon start to bubble again.
"We will grow out of the debt burden, we can include that as a fact in our planning," he said after the cabinet had adopted the benchmarks.
It is a "very manageable, very manageable situation".
However, before the impression arises that he wants to start handing out lavish election gifts, he makes it clear that growing out of debt alone will not be enough.
"That will only work with a more just and fairer tax system," said Scholz.
With which he gave an indication of how the missing money should get into the federal coffers if he still has responsibility after the federal election: about higher taxes.