Last update - 00:00 08/12/2006
Knesset trims 2007 economics bill, wins battle with treasury
By Zvi Zrahiya, Haaretz Correspondent
The Knesset House Committee decided to remove a quarter of the proposals in the 2007 Economic Arrangements Law, before passing on the rest of the bill to the appropriate Knesset committees to continue the legislative process.
Out of a total of 89 sections in the law, the committee removed 23. Some will be frozen, and thereby taken off the agenda, while some may be introduced again through the regular legislative channels in the Knesset only after the 2007 budget is passed.
The removal of such a large part of the Economic Arrangements Law at such an early stage of the process before the bill was even considered in the Knesset Finance Committee is unprecedented, said MKs.
The Economic Arrangements Law is a hodgepodge of treasury proposals that accompanies the budget every year. It is designed to bypass the regular legislative process to implement reforms and other changes that the Finance Ministry wants to push through quickly and usually without much debate.
Within the coalition, expectations are that further sections will be removed from the proposed law in the Finance Committee, and the final law to be passed by the Knesset in its second and third readings will be significantly smaller than the initial proposal.
While the Finance Ministry struggled to transfer most of the bill's sections to the Finance Committee, of the 62 remaining parts only 30 will end up with that committee; the rest will be debated in the Knesset committees that deal with the specific issues.
Of these sections, 15 will be read in the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee; 11 in the Economics Committee; four in the Internal Affairs and Environment Committee; and two in the Education, Culture and Sports Committee.
Divide and conquer
The main parts of the bill that were removed included: freezes on National Insurance Institute (NII) allowances, immigrant benefits, allowances for the victims of Nazi persecution and various benefits for the disabled.
In addition, the reform of the Bailiff's Office and HMOs were also removed.
Other sections relating the Wisconsin plan for returning unemployed to work, as well as changing the conditions for firing government workers, were removed from the law. In addition, the section cancelling the building of a hospital in Ashdod will be discussed as a regular law.
The Knesset is also unlikely to pass provisions that would prevent those under the age of 28 from receiving unemployment benefits, as well as various tax benefits for demobilized soldiers who work in various industries or gas stations.
A missed opportunity
The chairwoman of the House Committee, MK Ruhama Avraham of Kadima, who led the revolt against the law and bottled it up in her committee for a month, said: "The Knesset was able to make its mark on the Economic Arrangements Law, and demonstrate its independence from the Cabinet's positions."
The coalition whip, Avigdor Yitzhaki, praised the committee's passing of the law, and said that legislating the law would allow the Israeli economy to continue on its successful path. He added that the approval of the law would contribute to the stability of the government and economic growth.
MK Shelly Yachimovich of the Labor Party announced that she was considering petitioning the High Court of Justice over the matter of the Economic Arrangements Law. In her opinion, the committee could have removed more sections from the law, for example the postponement of the rise in the minimum wage, if only a few other coalition members had joined her. Yachimovich and Avraham both members of the governing coalition mostly voted against the coalition regarding the bill.
"It is a shame that we missed the opportunity to bring about the end of the Economic Arrangements Law, which is the most anti-democratic law in the Knesset's history," said Yachimovich.
Haim Oron of Meretz aid that the fight against the law was proper and fitting, but "the problem is that the Finance Ministry caused us to waste our energy on the Economic Arrangements law instead of concentrating on the problems with the budget."