When the debt brake for the federal and state governments came into force in 2009, it was a big deal for Baden-Württemberg. A year earlier, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) had already praised the “Swabian housewife” as a counter-model to the excesses that led to the banking crisis. “We should have simply asked the Swabian housewife,” said Merkel in 2008, in Stuttgart of course. “She would have told us a piece of wisdom: you can’t live beyond your means in the long run.”
With the debt brake, the Swabian housewife was no longer just a synonym for thrift. She became a central point in German financial policy: the federal government and the states were no longer to take out loans. Baden-Württemberg politicians played a part in the reform. The then Prime Minister Günther Oettinger (CDU) was co-chairman of the Federalism Commission that paved the way for the debt brake. Five politicians from the southwest were involved in the committee, including Winfried Kretschmann (Greens), the current Prime Minister. “The debt brake speaks Swabian,” wrote the Stuttgarter Zeitung.
But calls for special funds of all kinds are now coming from Baden-Württemberg of all places. Credit-financed special funds are one way of circumventing the debt ban. But they are also a construct that the Swabian housewife of Merkel’s type would presumably reject indignantly: Ha no!
So it was somewhat surprising when Prime Minister Kretschmann recently suggested a special fund for the railways and, on top of that, a special fund for the development of a green hydrogen network. In both areas, the southwest is worried about being left behind. Kretschmann’s former party colleague Boris Palmer is now following up with the demand for a “special construction fund for municipal housing companies” of over 100 billion euros – exactly the amount that the Bundestag has approved for the “special fund for the German armed forces”. In a joint memorandum with the local tenants’ association, the mayor of Tübingen justifies the move with a “precarious situation” on the housing market, which is affecting both tenants and the construction industry. Municipal housing companies could alleviate hardship by building new buildings locally. A special fund is necessary for this, because the municipalities are financially at their limit. In his public consultation hours, says Palmer, the question of affordable housing now dominates. The image of the Swabian house builder sung in a popular song (“work, work, build a house”) no longer reflects reality. Today, many people can barely afford the rent.
Financial scientists without a regional background have never been very keen on the idea of tackling macroeconomic challenges by comparing them to housewives. Nevertheless, the stereotype of the thrifty administrator of Swabian family coffers remained popular, especially in Württemberg, where poverty and pietism have long been dominant. Just this spring, the CDU parliamentary group leader in the state parliament, Manuel Hagel, called for “a kind of eternal guarantee for the debt brake, so that the discussion finally stops.”
