The traffic light coalition wants to replace Hartz IV with citizen income. The Union sharply criticized the project. Now SPD boss Klingbeil accuses his opponents Merz and Söder of handling wrong numbers in the debate.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil has attacked the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz and Bavaria's prime minister Markus Söder in the dispute over the planned citizens' allowance. The Union is a party "that lies under Markus Söder and Friedrich Merz with the aim of dividing society," said Klingbeil at the SPD debate convention in Berlin.
In the discussion about citizen income, the Union is spreading false numbers and playing low earners off against people who are dependent on the state. "Anyone who behaves like this, who follows Donald Trump's path of spreading fake news, who thinks the country needs to be divided, has no place in the political center of this country." Klingbeil said that the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) had refuted the statement that non-working recipients of citizen benefits would in future have more money at their disposal than full-time workers with low incomes.
The federal government wants to introduce citizen income from January and thus replace Hartz IV. Most recently, the traffic light agreed on changes to the project. Among other things, there should be some tightening of the planned two-year waiting period for beneficiaries. It is planned, for example, that the heating costs during this time should only be covered to an appropriate extent.
The government's original draft bill did not provide for a limit on reimbursement at this point. The Union had sharply criticized this and threatened to block the project in the Federal Council. Politicians from the CDU and CSU criticize that the extensive waiver of sanctions against recipients reduces the incentive to take up work. They also consider the planned protective assets to be too high. It should be 60,000 euros for the actual benefit recipient in the first 24 months.
