At start of budget debate, Lapid accuses government of ‘stealing money’ from working Israelis

Addressing the Knesset plenum at the beginning of an extended debate prior to the passage of the 2025 state budget, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accuses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of knowingly “hurting working people.”

Netanyahu “sacrificed them on the altar of politics” and is “stealing their money and transferring it to coalition partners,” Lapid alleges, insisting that the budget “brings us dangerously close to the point where this country will not be able to support itself.”

“What you see on the Knesset channel is people sitting and voting. What is really happening is that the Israeli government is entering our homes, entering our bank accounts, stealing the money of the productive and working public and transferring it to the draft dodgers and the corrupt,” he argues.

“The government no longer even pretends to be managing the economy. Notice how Netanyahu distances himself from this budget. He has not said a word about the economy for months. [This is] not by chance. He knows what’s going on here.”

“Trust Netanyahu, if this were a good budget, if there were any good news in it, he would be standing here right now with his chest puffed out and explaining that it was all because of him,” Lapid continues. “If you take NIS 1.3 billion from the convalescence payments of working people, and give it as a coalition bribe to people who do not work – that is not a budget. It is theft,” he says.

“If during a time of war, you distribute NIS 5.4 billion of coalition funds to corrupt wheeler-dealers and yeshivas of draft dodgers, that is not a budget, it is theft. If you maintain 15 unnecessary government ministries, which cost endless money and only create more and more bureaucracy – that is not a budget. It is theft.”