In the video: Smotrich attacks: "The mayors are fighting those who want to lower the cost of housing" (Photo: GPO)
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was interviewed Wednesday morning on Yinon Magal and Ben Caspit's program on Radio 103FM. On the agenda: The final stretch for approving the state budget and the Arrangements Law, and against the background of the ongoing confrontation between the Ministry of Finance and the local government following the approval of the establishment of the Arnona fund.
"Aren't the ultra-Orthodox, the religious, part of the state's citizens?" asked Smotrich in the interview, responding mockingly: "They loot as if the state belongs to a certain sector, the Balfour demonstrators, and loot them and give them to others? This is perhaps a percentage of the state budget. There is 99 percent of the budget that goes to education, higher education, infrastructure, transportation. We loot public funds and invest NIS 150 billion in the metro to the Gush Dan metropolitan area. We loot 26 billion and give to the roads. Where does this ridiculous terminology come from? Every government, and that's how it is in a democracy, has priorities, the government is allowed within its priorities, and it's a percentage, to strengthen settlement in the Negev, Galilee, Judea and Samaria, to strengthen Jewish identity, to correct longstanding discrimination in Haredi education budgets, to increase the budget for yeshivas. Just as other governments were allowed to invest in other things that were important to them. At the end of the day, there is the core budget, a great budget, encouraging growth, very responsible, very restrained."
Bezalel Smotrich, May 1, 2023 (Photo by Reuven Castro)
The Finance Minister also referred to a report by the Chief Economist at the Ministry of Finance, Shira Greenberg, in which she warned, among other things, that increasing the allowances of the elderly would harm the integration of Haredim into the labor market and even lowered Israel's growth forecast. "It's just false framing. This is a good report and the growth forecasts in Israel are still higher than in the rest of the world. All over the world, forecasts are now being revised downward. We knew we were in a period of economic uncertainty, but there would be no extremists and no tax increases."
Regarding the budgets for the meetings, Smotrich said: "There is also an increase there. Maybe that's less financially correct, so what? A country doesn't just do what's good for the economy. When you require factories to install filters to protect the environment, that's also not economically correct, but the state has other values that are important for it to promote."
This week, the Knesset Finance Committee finished approving the budget laws and the decision will go to the Knesset plenum, where white nights are expected from today until the approval of the budget and the Arrangements Law next week.
Lavala! It was learned that Chairman of Torah Judaism and Minister of Housing and Construction Yitzhak Goodknopf on Monday expressed his demand to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to receive about half a billion shekels for ultra-Orthodox education, according to Goldknopf, as part of what was promised to his party in the coalition agreement they signed with the Likud. In other words, Goldknopf's demand to receive these funds is in addition to the coalition funds estimated at a total of NIS 13.6 billion.
Goldknopf demanded to receive some of the funds in question already in the current school year, and another part retroactively. The demand of the chairman of Torah Judaism is that NIS 217 million be transferred to ultra-Orthodox exemption institutions, some of which do not teach 400% core studies, and another NIS <> million to be transferred retroactively to yeshiva students and Avrachim.
Sources in Torah Judaism addressed the issue and told Walla!: "There are no new demands here, everything is in the coalition agreements. We only insist that what was promised be given and fulfilled."
Minister of the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience, Yitzhak Wasserlauf of Otzma Yehudit, also expressed his displeasure with what he called an "unfair distribution" of the state budget. "It's easy for Smotrich to negotiate with himself," he said. "Judaizing the Galilee has been neglected and it is impossible to save the situation without the budget."
On Sunday, the government approved the distribution of coalition funds totaling NIS 13.6 billion for 2024-2023. According to the proposal, the two-year state budget approved at the end of the month will include NIS 5.7 billion in 2023 and NIS 7.9 billion in 2024, which will be distributed mainly to sectoral needs of the ultra-Orthodox, settlers and national religious, such as increasing the budget for yeshivas, support for ultra-Orthodox and state religious education, and budgets for religious services, ancestral graves, the conversion system, the establishment of MK Avi Maoz's Jewish Identity Authority, and the Shas food stamp program.
According to the distribution of coalition funds, among other things, close to NIS 4 billion will be transferred to the yeshiva budget over the next two years, NIS 1.18 billion to the salaries of teaching staff in Haredi educational institutions, and half a billion NIS will be transferred to the Ministry of Jerusalem and Tradition of MK Meir Frosh. More than 700 million shekels will be transferred to Minister Orit Strock's Ministry of Settlement, 450 million shekels will be transferred to the young settlement, 285 million shekels to Maoz and the Jewish Identity Authority that he demanded to be established in the Prime Minister's Office. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir will receive NIS 1.3 billion to strengthen national security, out of the NIS 9 billion he claimed he was promised as a budget supplement.
Assisted in the preparation of the article: Shani Romano 103fm
- news
- Political-Political
Tags
- Bezalel Smotrich
- State budget
- Arnona
- Arrangements Law
