Or how similar it is to every pro austerity politician ever.

Oh, I forgot one of the highlights as it happened right in the beginning of Merz’ tenure. They loudly campaigned on no new debts of course while everyone else agreed that some will be needed (after decades of investment backlog caused by his party). Then they took on an historic amount of debt for investments into defense, the economy and infrastructure the moment they won the elctions… and wasted it all on tax cuts and similiar bullshit while actually investing even less in the crumbling infrastructure than their cash-strapped predecessors did.