Following Smotrich's statement, the families of the abductees call to demonstrate in Kirya/Walla system!
The revised state budget for 2024 was supposed to pass a second and third reading on February 19 according to the law.
It turns out that not only can the government bend the laws of the country and postpone the approval of the budget to an unknown date in early March (but it can demand that the citizens not deviate a millimeter from the language of the law), it can also clarify to the ministers the meaning of its violation of the law - a horizontal cut of 67 billion shekels, in retrospect.
Just this morning, two days after the deadline, the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, issued a letter to the government ministers, in which he clarifies the meaning of the cut that was imposed on the state budget due to the dragging of feet in approving the budget, which came about because of his attempts to introduce coalition funds into it.
So far, Smotrich has dismissed, not to say with utter disdain, the consequences of the horizontal cut and called it a "procedure", while now he is instructing the ministers on what they are allowed and what they are not allowed to do, pending a vote in the Knesset.
An unwanted trick in a complex period.
Smotrich/Flash 90, Jonathan Zindel
In his letter, the Minister of Finance says that an effort will be made to speed up the work on the budget, "alongside the importance of respecting the Knesset and allowing it to carry out its work and discussions in an orderly manner and in the time necessary for this."
This statement is far from reality, since the discussions in the finance committee on the amendments to the budget only started at the beginning of the week, and usually they last for a good few months, going over all the sections meticulously.
So the members of the committee do not have enough time to discuss them seriously, and therefore the discussions in the Knesset will also be short.
Smotrich explains to the ministers in the letter that "During the interim period, you must avoid new engagements and act in accordance with the instructions of the Accountant General with regard to previous commitments. We are at your service during the interim period, to solve individual problems as they arise, and to make sure that the activities of the ministries will not be substantially harmed as a result of the flow challenge."
This means that the Minister of Finance also predicts, seven times a war, that new engagements will be needed, that in order to carry them out in practice, special approvals and complicated bureaucracy will be required.
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General Accountant Yehli Rotenberg./Official website, Gilad Artzi
Accountant General Yehli Rotenberg was prepared for the current reality, which made it difficult for the current conduct ahead of time, when the delay in approving the budget became real.
At the beginning of January, Rotenberg issued a directive to all accountants in government ministries not to approve budgets that are not related to dealing with the consequences of the war on the economy or that are related to the ministry's core activities.
"As part of the 2024 budget update, changes and adjustments will be made to the scope and composition of the state's expenditures and revenues," he wrote.
"In order to allow the Israeli government the necessary flexibility to make changes on the spending side, and in order not to determine facts on the ground that would make it difficult to change priorities."
The Accountant General ordered the accountants to "exercise discretion when approving expenditure from the state budget, taking into account its necessity and urgency at this time, and to act in the budgetary restraint that is required at this time, with an emphasis on the use of flexible budgets that are not at the core of the ministry's activities and that are not related to the war."
In a complex economic period, where there is a need to restore settlements and start large national projects, the last thing that is needed is bureaucratic sticks being stuck because of a local "shut down", which originates from political exercises.
This "formal" matter, as the minister called it, will cost us more.
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Bezalel Smotrich