Lapid slams proposed budget, says country is paying the price for Netanyahu’s failures

By Sam Sokol 13 March 2024, 1:21 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

File - Opposition Leader Yair Lapid leads a meeting of his Yesh Atid faction at the Knesset in Jerusalem, March 11, 2024. (Sindel/Flash90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s amended 2024 wartime budget “tears the mask off all the government’s talk of unity,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid declares during a debate in the Knesset ahead of the budget bill’s second and third readings.

“You don’t want unity, you want to be paid. You don’t want to live together, you want to live at the expense of the public,” he says. “This is all that is left of your talk of unity… You are telling the productive and working public that unity means that you will pay: Pay with your money, pay with your business, pay with your bills, pay with your life.”

“What is being said here today is not a budget, it is a bill. You messed up, you destroyed, and now you are giving us the bill. The public will pay. For everything,” he charges. “They will pay for the war you are guilty of. They will pay the ultra-Orthodox so that they don’t serve in the army. They will pay for [Minister of National Missions] Orit Strock’s messianic delusions. They will pay for [Minister of Regional Cooperation David] Amsalem’s corruption. They will pay for the failures of a dysfunctional government and a destructive and incompetent prime minister.”

Reservists returning after months of service get warning phone calls from their bank. Grocery prices are soaring. “And what is your response? You are increasing the funding for yeshivas to an all-time high, increasing the coalition funds to an all-time high, increasing to an all-time high the number of unnecessary ministries with unnecessary ministers.”

“You think people don’t understand what a downgrade is, what a deficit is, what coalition funding is… You have no idea how wrong you are. The people understand exactly what is happening,” he says.

The amended wartime budget pairs across-the-board cuts with additional spending on war-related matters and has generated widespread opposition — both within and outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition — with many complaining that it fails to trim extraneous spending and coalition-linked interests while cutting back on critical services.

Among these are billions of shekels in funding for ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, educational institutions that fail to teach the state-mandated core curriculum.