, promising to shield businesses and workers from the economic hit of the pandemic as cases continue to rise.
"The budget is the basis for everyone to be confident that we can provide the necessary economic and social support to get us through this crisis together," Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told lawmakers. It means for both 2020 and 2021, Germany will abandon its cherished"debt brake," a constitutionally enshrined rule that forbids the government from borrowing more than 0.35% of gross domestic product , before planning to return to no new debt in 2022.
Yet case rates continue to climb. On Friday, Germany reported a record nearly 30,000 new infections and almost 600 deaths in a 24-hour period.Despite the"ray of hope" of a vaccine rollout, Scholz said,"we know that...we're going to be struggling well into next year with the health, economic, and social challenges that are going to follow from this pandemic."