The NIS 255 billion budget passed with the expected majority, but it is not the last word, after all the aggravation and money invested in the coalition to avoid the wrong vote. Within a month or two, we'll see a new budget, as if the budget passed last night was just a bluff.
70 hours of debate preceded the vote. The Knesset worked round the clock. The speeches were made for the record and for Channel 33, but the Knesset chamber was virtually empty. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin calculated that the show cost the taxpayers NIS 200,000. Rivlin counted 36 nighttime hours since Sunday, at NIS 6,000 per hour to pay for overtime to employees and ushers, electricity, air-conditioning, and sandwiches.
"The price of democracy," was the answer on the tip of Rivlin's tongue. Price? Definitely. Democracy? Hardly. A suitable phrase has not yet been coined in the political science lexicons for the parliamentary saga of the budget debate. The pseudo-democracy actually suits this pseudo-budget. The framework is legal and fair, but it is empty of content. Knesset input on the budget has long been a fiction begging for a reform to replace the annual ritual that is repeated ad nauseum.
You will no doubt ask, and rightly, what does it matter if the coalition majority was ensured in advance with a NIS 1.3 billion backhander? True, but at the same time we could wonder why the Knesset Finance Committee bothers the people's representatives with a debate, giving them the illusion that they can influence the committee members, when the Ministry of Finance can usually force its position on the committee.
The general picture is one of a bankrupt government, but the Finance Committee lacks the time, power, and professional knowledge to intervene on the annual budget and economics arrangement law, or propose an alternative set of priorities.
More than once during the Finance Committee's debate on the budget, Ministry of Finance officials made the threat that the "budget reserves have run out", especially when the bargaining with the budget-busting coalition partners got complicated. There's no need to panic. This is the Ministry of Finance's usual stick with which to beat the politicians. The budget reserve is a flexible concept. The budget mentions a reserve of NIS 5.4 billion, plus another NIS 7.5 billion that can be authorized for commitments. This is big money.
A lesser-known detail is that the budget reserve is also a codeword that conceals the budgets for the Mossad and General Security Service. What is their share? It can easily be calculated if we take the Minister of Finance's comments that the NIS 1.3 billion was paid to buy the coalition's quienscence wiped out the budget reserve. Knowledgeable sources claim that Netanyahu exaggerated. One way or another, the trough will run dry only if it is exploited to supplement the defense and local authorities budgets, in order to avoid submitting a supplementary budget.
But there's always a way out. The budget reserve is like a hole children dig at the beach. It always fills with water, even when it seems to have run dry. Anyone seeking the secret of the Ministry of Finance's power will find it in the concealed items that it hides in the official budget under genuine sections with inflated amounts, which it uses to remove any threat that the reserves will run out.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on January 8, 2004