€3 billion more for the job agency: the budget line nobody campaigned for

The loudest fight in Berlin this week is about electricity tax. The more telling number sits in a document most people will never read. According to the latest draft amendments for the 2027 budget, sent out late on Monday evening and seen by the Tagesspiegel, the government has registered further spending, including a much larger loan to the Federal Employment Agency “because of the situation on the labour market”¹. The loan rises by €3 billion to €8.2 billion¹.

What the line says. The agency pays unemployment benefit out of contributions. When it borrows from the federal budget, it is because claims are running ahead of income. No minister announces that in a speech. It turns up as a revised loan in the clean-up papers, which is exactly why those papers are worth reading. The same draft also tops up support for electric cars, because demand “is developing much more dynamically” than planned, and lists several defence projects that have become more expensive¹.

The room is small. Merkur, citing Bild, Reuters and ZDF, puts planned spending at €555.4 billion, with new core borrowing of €118.7 billion, rising to almost €204 billion including the special funds for infrastructure and the Bundeswehr². After the autumn tax estimate and the debt brake’s tighter limit, the arithmetic leaves about €1.4 billion of room². Against that, coalition leaders were still negotiating overnight, and the budget committee’s traditionally long clean-up session starts on Thursday².

The two lists. The SPD wants to win back cuts to child maintenance advances, parental allowance and housing benefit, and insists everything be “solidly” financed¹. The CSU’s Alexander Hoffmann says: “We want to present a genuine savings budget in 2027”¹. Desk arithmetic: the €3 billion added for the job agency alone is about twice the €1.4 billion of room reported^1,2.

For you, the useful habit this week is to read the amendments, not the interviews. A loan to the Federal Employment Agency is not a scandal. It is the state doing what it promised: paying people who lost work. That is the machinery working, and it is worth knowing what it costs.