The traffic light dispute over the budget speaks volumes

KNext weekend will happen what Germany’s not so new progress coalition actually wanted to avoid. In a big showdown, called the coalition committee, she wants to settle her now quite numerous conflicts about road construction and combustion engines, about gas heating and armament, but above all: about the Householdthe dear money that is still the hard currency of power.

The last time something like this happened almost 13 years ago, in the distant year 2010. Similar to the Corona and energy crisis, the state spent quite a lot of money at the time to curb the macroeconomic consequences of the bank crash. Now it was time to get the household back to normal. The finance minister at the time wasn’t called Wolfgang Schäuble Christian Lindner, but the responsible state secretary was the same: Werner Gatzer demanded a savings contribution of two billion euros from the defense minister. “If that’s the case, then conscription cannot be maintained,” countered Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Although the chancellor decided that “conscription could not be abolished on a Sunday afternoon”, she allowed it to happen anyway.