Abstract
The current debt brake prevents necessary future investments. This article contains a pragmatic proposal to amend Article 109 paragraph (3) of the Basic Law, which essentially argues in favour of a transition from the cameralistic perspective on cash-based accounting to the perspective of commercial (double-entry) bookkeeping on income and expenditure. This would counter the investment backlog and pave the way for future-oriented expenditures, e.g. on infrastructure, education and research. Net government investment through additional borrowing can take place provided that the income from loans is not higher than the investment expenditure, which exceeds the average investment expenditure of the past ten years. If economic growth is sufficiently high, higher new borrowing is compliant with the Maastricht criteria. This will counter the investment backlog and pave the way for future-oriented spending on infrastructure, education and research.