"Yeah, yeah, you're laughing": Saskia Esken has to talk against the audience on "Caren Miosga"

teleschau "Yeah, yeah, you're laughing": Saskia Esken has to talk against the audience on "Caren Miosga" Marko Schlichting • 3 hours • 4 minutes reading time It wasn't easy: SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken was confronted with laughter from the audience for some of her statements. The parties have chosen their candidates for chancellor, including the SPD. Its chairwoman Saskia Esken is a guest on Sunday evening with Caren Miosga on Das Erste. With "Stern" political editor Veit Medick and CDU politician Reiner Haseloff, she commented on the new elections - and sometimes caused laughter in the audience. Sometimes you have to pay close attention on a talk show. That is also the case this Sunday evening on "Caren Miosga" on Das Erste. Saxony-Anhalt's Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff announced a legislative initiative that he will introduce in the Bundesrat. It is intended to enable the exchange of information about possible criminals between the federal states. This is intended to make attacks such as the one on the Christmas market in Magdeburg more difficult. The Bundesrat had previously blocked the security package drawn up by the traffic light coalition. The broadcast on Sunday evening is actually supposed to be about the election campaign. Motto: "GroKo again?" Caren Miosga has invited SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken and Reiner Haseloff (CDU), the Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, to attend. The SPD and CDU have a lot of plans, especially when it comes to the German economy. Both want to stimulate the economy. To this end, the SPD is planning a "Made in Germany bonus": companies that invest in Germany's future should in future be reimbursed 10 percent of the investment amount. The Union, on the other hand, wants to limit the tax burden on companies from around 30 to a maximum of 25 percent. The Union and SPD also want to ease the burden on citizens: specifically, they want to reform income tax and raise the threshold for the top tax rate. The SPD wants to relieve 95 percent of taxpayers, but burden top earners. The Union wants to increase the commuter allowance and abolish the solidarity tax once and for all. Neither the Union nor the SPD have stated how they intend to finance their plans. Reiner Haseloff stressed that a situation like the one in Austria with the CDU would not arise. There, the right-wing populist FPÖ could provide the chancellor of a coalition together with the conservative ÖVP. For Haseloff, it is particularly important that the framework conditions for companies change: they must be able to plan their investments, "chaos like in recent years" must no longer occur. Otherwise, more and more companies would leave Germany. Esken also says: "We absolutely have to counteract this." The network charges could be regulated and energy costs further reduced before the elections. The Union parties in the Bundestag would only have to agree to the corresponding demands of the SPD and the Greens. "That is not enough," says Haseloff, "We have to create an overall package." Haseloff is also in favor of regulating network charges, "But they must be embedded in an overall energy concept," and the next federal government must get that started. "Stern" journalist Veit Medick quickly became the audience favorite of the issue with his critical questions. Veit Medick: "The programs don't really match reality" That's all well and good, but if you listen to Stern political editor Veit Medick, you quickly realize: Germany may have completely different problems. Medick is the audience favorite this evening. No one gets as much applause as the journalist. "The programs don't really match reality," he criticizes. While the world is falling apart, both parties are promising a kind of "winter wonderland." "But in these predatory times, nobody is expected to do anything. That cannot be! The big questions are not being addressed properly: How do we secure Germany? How do we prepare ourselves militarily? How do we deal with the grotesque wealth gap? How do we imagine Europe that no longer exists as a unified whole? Where is the education revolution that we have been talking about for 20 years? Why are we still letting our children's schools go into disrepair?" The centrist parties lack the courage to question the status quo in such a way that they become serious competition to the populists, says Medick. He cites the financing of the social security system as an example. "There is no pension reform, and everyone knows that it is no longer affordable." "That is not true," Esken replies - and this triggers laughter in the audience. Then she explains that pensions would be affordable if more people from abroad worked in Germany and more women worked full-time. Haseloff prefers not to comment on pensions at all. But he knows one thing: the debt brake will not be touched to finance the CDU/CSU’s election program.