This is the best summary I could come up with:
If approved by parliament, where Scholz’s parties hold a majority, the boost would lift Germany’s defence spending to 2.1% of its gross domestic product target, beyond the 2% pledged by all North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, the source added.
Lawmakers from Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Free Democrats and the Green party agreed on the increase in negotiations over the proposed 2024 federal budget ahead of a formal meeting of the budget committee of the Bundestag - or lower house of parliament - on Thursday, Nov. 16, the source said.
A spokesperson for Germany’s Ministry of Defence said the Bundestag committee has not finished negotiations and declined to comment further.
Defence minister Boris Pistorius, interviewed by broadcaster ARD, referred to the planned doubling of military aid to Ukraine.
“It is a strong signal to Ukraine that we will not leave them in the lurch,” he said, adding the move, if agreed, would mean the annual budget allocation would be enough to last the whole year.
Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper had also said the committee is due to approve the additional 4 billion euros.
The original article contains 340 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 46%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
money doesn’t immediately create soldiers or weapons.
Thing is that people running the west are completely detached from material reality. If you look at their backgrounds, they all come from media, law, lobbying, and so on. They think they can just will things to happen if they want them hard enough. They don’t understand that you can’t just spin up factories and create an educated workforce to operate them out of thin air.
This leads to hilarious outcome like this one where EU leaders thought they could just dump money into shell production to increase it. Instead, the price for one artillery shell has gone up to 8,000 euros from 2,000 euros due to lack of supply and increased liquidity.
But there’s no additional money available for infrastructure and social services within Germany. Something something Bundeshaushalt excuse and EU federal debt limit.
Whew, watch out, I mentioned the same kind of sentiment on a post about the billions of dollars that America is sending for the war, and got lectured on “that’s not how government budgeting works and you know it blah blah blah”
It’s neat how it’s so easy for capitalist governments to authorize money for killing people, but when it comes to social spending there isn’t even a penny to spare.
The German finance minister has been gleeful up on his high horse preventing additional spending on important things Germans need, but approved a €100B special fund for the military in 2022 outside of the bounds of the federal budget.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that most of the US “aid” is actually loans. Even their food aid comes with real strong strings attached. The US owns Ukraine at this point. Although I’d don’t know how German aid spending or military spending in support of Israel in general is structured.
Investing in making people die over-seas, rather than the wellbeing of their own population that essentially pays their wage…
Yea, anyone would find that blatantly suspicious. Their goals are perfectly clear.
But people have drank so much USA Koolaid that they cant possibly imagine a country running any differently.
If they’re unwilling to stop an aggressor at their doorstep for a fraction of their budget, having more infrastructure or social services won’t help them much
If it’s such a small fraction, why is it so impossible to use it for other means?
Name one country with a bigger military budget
proudly standing tall on the bridge and saluting as the ship goes down…
good, more dead Russians
