Budget Passes On Final Day Of Knesset
Written by TPS on March 15, 2018
After a two week-long coalition crisis that threatened to bring down the government, the Knesset passed the 2019 budget with a 62-54 vote overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, ahead of the final day of parliament’s winter session.
The 2019 budget, which passed a full nine and a half months before it goes into effect, stands at NIS 479.6 billion, an increase of 4.3% on the 2018 budget.
The defense budget for 2019 will be NIS 63 billion, not including US military aid, while education is the second highest clause in the budget at NIS 60 billion. Both defense and education however are dwarfed by debt repayment, which stands at NIS 79.2 billion. The debt ceiling for 2019 is set at 2.9% of the budget. Growth is projected at 3.1%.
Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who had threatened to quit the coalition if the budget was not passed by the end of the winter session on March 15, said “when I heard a couple of weeks ago that the state budget was being used as an extortion tool, I said I would not let it happen. I repeat: I did not do this for my own purposes, but rather I insisted the budget pass because harming the budget harms the state.”
The coalition crisis erupted when the United Torah Judaism party said it would not support the budget if legislation exempting yeshiva students from mandatory military service was not passed beforehand. An agreement was finally fashioned on Tuesday night under which a preliminary reading of the exemptions bill was passed, while Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu faction was excused from coalition discipline and allowed to vote against, and a defense ministry sponsored bill will be put on the table in the summer and merged with the haredi supported bill.
“To have taken down a government on the eve of a budget over sectorial disputes or for a headline in the papers would have been a disgrace,” Kahlon said.
MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ), the chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, said the budget was the first he remembered without major cuts. “It is a budget that contains very positive elements – it makes unprecedented budgetary increases, it increases the health budget significantly, it increases the education, defense and welfare budgets and reduces taxes,” Gafni said.