Ex-budgets chief slams looming state budget, says government advancing ‘extremist agenda’

Shaul Meridor, who headed the Finance Ministry’s Budgets Department from 2017 until 2020, when he resigned in protest of the Likud government’s policies, takes aim at the current looming state budget, accusing it of advancing an “extremist agenda” and ignoring professionals’ opinions and warnings.

“The government is passing a budget that clearly reflects its priorities — yeshivas are favored over employment, ignorance and food stamps are favored over education, gas is subsidized instead of dealing with the cost of living,” he says at the main anti-overhaul protest on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street.

He says that even if the government “tramples over another sacred value or transfers more of the money we pay to destroy Israel’s economy,” the protesters “will be here to fix the destruction they will leave.”