The economic plan does not answer only to the headline "cutting war expenses" or "returning the economy to functioning" – it is a campaign of revenge.
Smotrich criticizes budget department personnel: "Bringing out the soul with a spoon" // Noam Rivkin Fenton/Flash90
The opposition and the media attacked the coalition funds because they all reflect a right-wing coalition agenda – from the ultra-Orthodox to the settlements to the Torah nuclei. But in the next budget, many funds that the right-wing camp has less interest in will be cut, mainly budgets for culture, academia and the media.
The program of cuts will cut into live meat. Cultural (secular) institutions will suffer dramatic cuts. The Ministry of Finance will demand that budgeted universities close or reduce entire faculties, those that do not help the economy in the war. Senior coalition officials are "hot" on the matter and will not give up. After the war against Hamas, the war for public resources will return, and this time it is clear to everyone who started it.
Netanyahu and Smotrich agreed to bring a rapid revised budget to the end of 2023, Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom / GPO
Supplement for secular teachers - yes, for ultra-Orthodox teachers - no
Two weeks after the start of the school year, an agreement was signed between the Finance Ministry and the teachers' union, and the large strike planned for the high schools was halted. The increase in teachers' salaries was agreed in accordance with Ran Erez's demands. Shortly thereafter, the Finance Ministry signed a similar agreement with the Haredi school teachers' union. The teachers are the same teachers, the work is the same job, the representative organization is different. The Ministry of Finance doesn't like big changes. The salaries of teachers in state schools are part of the Ministry of Education. They wanted to put the addition to the ultra-Orthodox in another category, in coalition funds. This is the same money that comes out of the same pocket, but from a different branch of the bank. Managing multiple accounts is one way for Treasury officials to control the cash register better. Supervision is tighter.
Both agreements were launched, and all teachers received the agreed salary revision in their salaries. But then war broke out, and the need to devote considerable resources to the fighting forced the Treasury to embark on a broad program of cuts. The immediate opposition demand was to cut coalition funds. After a propaganda campaign and sweeping support for the move by mainstream media outlets, Benny Gantz, also from within the coalition, announced that he would not agree to approve a budget that did not include the cancellation of the coalition funds.
He announced that he would not agree to approve a budget that did not include the cancellation of the coalition funds. Benny Gantz, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
The teachers of Erez's teachers' union will continue to receive the salary increase agreed upon, but teachers in Haredi schools will have their salaries reduced to their pre-agreement level signed in September. Not because these are worth more or less, but because the source of money in the internal distribution of the treasury is different. If any of the haredi factions demanded that the salaries of haredi teachers be included in the budget base, no one would hear about it.
The ultra-Orthodox parties learned their lesson
Lesson learned. Finance Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni made it clear after the cabinet meeting that approved the budget, with the opposition of the ministers of the state camp, that he would no longer sit in a government in which funds to the ultra-Orthodox are transferred through coalition funds. He intends to implement this requirement as early as the 2024 budget, which the Ministry of Finance is currently beginning to formulate. We learned our lesson, he said, and no one will turn us around anymore. Our funds are like everyone else's, and they won't get any other title, he clarified.
He made it clear that he would no longer sit in a government in which funds to the ultra-Orthodox are transferred through coalition funds. Chairman of the Finance Committee, MK Moshe Gafni (archive), photo: Oren Ben Hakon
From the finance minister to the prime minister, everyone understood the turn that was being made here, and they have no intention of leaving the situation as it is. There are no more coalition funds. Everything goes inside into the budget. Want to cut back? No problem, but let it be businesslike. There are hundreds of unnecessary budget items in wartime that are not in coalition funds.
The full column will be published tomorrow in "Israel This Week."
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