At 3 am today, after 18 straight hours of debate, which included hundreds of amendments from opposition MKs, the Knesset plenum passed the 2013-14 budget. The vote was 58 MKs in favor and 43 against, while 19 MKs were absent. The debate included votes on the various amendments submitted by parties and MKs.
The all-night session that MKs had planned was cut short, when the opposition, which had promised a war of attrition, withdrew most of the 4,700 amendments. In exchange, the coalition promised to reopen the discussion on raising the minimum vote threshold for parties to win Knesset seats in the new Governance bill. The coalition and opposition agreed to shorten the all-night session, and the debate, which was due to end at 9 am today, ended at 3:30 am.
After the vote, Labor Party chairwoman MK Shelly Yachimovich said, "The budget harms 99% of the public - the middle class and the poor - with a severity we haven’t seen since the Netanyahu budget of 2003: an income tax hike, a VAT hike, a companies tax hike on small and mid-sized businesses, cuts the child allowance, reduced credit points for graduates, cuts in health, welfare, and education services, and other unforgiveable blows."
Yachimovich added, "This is a budget without hope or vision, or any growth generators. It will continue to widen the gaps in Israeli society, and the destructive erosion of the middle class."
The votes on the reservations to the budget, which began yesterday morning, opened with the usual speech by the finance minister. In his opening remarks, Minister of Finance Yair Lapid said that opposition MKs were living in a "fantasy world."
"I would like to give and give," said Lapid. "I would like to cut income tax to 2%, to give a car to every worker, a plane to every family… Now that the fantasies are over, the time has come to return to the real world. This budget dealt with the question, 'Where is the money', and with closing the NIS 35 billion budget hole - a problem that no one wanted to tackle. We tackled those things that the opposition preferred to ignore, closed their eyes to, and imagined did not exist. We had to decide whether to let the whole business collapse around us - the main thing being that people should not be angry at us, that we should not think about tomorrow, but only on what will be written about us in the newspaper - or to show leadership that takes the real world into account, not the fantasy world.
"This place at which I stand and present the budget to you is the place where it not only possible to talk, but to defend Israel's people and the middle class, not the Israeli people in fantasy land and the middle class in cloud-cuckoo land. We drew up a tough budget, but we still put the middle class in the center."
Lapid continued, "This is a budget which tells the Israeli middle class, 'There is someone who represents you'. This is a budget which will create growth, incentives to work, a budget that will encourage industries and technologies and small businesses. Even in these hard times, we have increased the budgets for welfare, health, education, and transport… We did what was possible in the real world in which real people live."
Lapid is Netanyahu's presenter
Yachimovich argued that Lapid's economic policy resembled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policy, and would harm the economy and the poor. "When I realized for the first time how the budget and Economic Arrangements bill of the finance minister, who came here to change things, looked, I had a powerful feeling of déjà vu," she said. "I was reminded of another finance minister, one who thought that if we give a lot, really a lot, to the rich, things will be good one day. Because, at some mysterious stage, growth will trickle down to all Israelis. If we privatize everything, things will be better. If we cut taxes for tycoons, there will be a better business climate. He did not mean for small businesses, but for the fat and the cream."
Yachimovich ridiculed Netanyahu and Lapid, saying that Netanyahu "needed a good presenter, someone younger, connected to the protest… someone with experience who was once a presenter for Bank Hapoalim. Netanyahu appointed Lapid as his presenter, and what does the presenter do? Forgets the demonstrations, forgets that he spoke about a new politics, forgets that he swore to protect the middle class, and devotes himself wholly to the role. What is he selling? The exact same policy that he ridiculed."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 30, 2013
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