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ECONOMY

CDU man slams Merkel’s handling of financial crisis

Josef Schlarmann, chairman of the Christian Democrats' organisation for small and mid-sized businesses (MIT), has criticised the way his party has handled the financial crisis, saying that the CDU is becoming too left-wing.

CDU man slams Merkel's handling of financial crisis
Photo: DPA

In an interview to be published in the latest edition of the news magazine Focus, Schlarmann complained of a “growing Social Democratisation” of the CDU. He said that the planned infrastructure investments in the second stimulus package recently announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel were entirely debt-financed, and could only be paid for by raising taxes. “That discredits the tax-reduction promises for the CDU’s 2009 election campaign.”

Schlarmann said that tax reductions were vital for the economy in these troubled economic times, even if not all the saved money will get ploughed back into consumption. “It is unacceptable to patronise the private citizen by dictating how his money should be spent.” Schlarmann sees it as “alarming, that this way of thinking has spread into my own party.”

According to Schlarmann, there is only one force in the conservatives that supports regulation and immediate tax reduction – the Christian Democrats’ Bavarian sister party the CSU.