From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Lawmakers kick off Knesset debate on contentious amended 2024 budget
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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"
The Knesset plenum begins a special 25-hour debate ahead of a vote of the proposed amended 2024 wartime budget.
According to the revised budget bill, which was passed by the cabinet in January and approved by the Knesset Finance Committee for its second and third readings last week, the government expenditure limit for 2024 will stand at NIS 584.1 billion ($160 billion), more than NIS 70 billion ($19 billion) higher than the original 2024 budget approved in May 2023, prior to the outbreak of war on October 7.
The new budget also increases the deficit target from 2.25% of GDP to 6.6%.
The budget pairs across-the-board cuts with additional spending on war-related matters, with NIS 55 billion ($15 billion) of the additional 70 billion going toward financing military needs while the rest is allocated to civilian needs.
It has generated widespread opposition — both within and outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition — with many complaining that it fails to trim extraneous spending while cutting back on critical services.
In December, the Finance Ministry reportedly recommended closing 10 superfluous government ministries to cover the wartime budget shortfall of NIS 70 billion, but this has not been done.
In addition, critics allege that it allocates funds to coalition-linked interests, such as ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, educational institutions which fail to teach the state-mandated core curriculum, while slashing spending for society at large.
According to a poll of 600 people carried out by the Smith Institute and published by Channel 12 today, a large majority of Jewish citizens oppose the budget’s allocation of billions of shekels to the Haredi school system, including supporters of the current government.
Seventy-three percent of respondents state that they are against the budget and that “all possible budgets should be directed to the needs of the fighting and the reconstruction of the Western Negev, the north and the reserve soldiers” rather than be used as “coalition funds allocated to the ultra-Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties.”
While 93% of secular Israelis, 57% of the national-religious and 67% of Likud voters are against the budget, no Haredim polled expressed opposition.
Speaking to reporters at his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset yesterday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that he “expects the opposition to understand the magnitude of the hour and not oppose a responsible budget.”
“A vote against the budget is like a vote against the continuation of fighting and civilian resilience,” he said.
