Last update - 00:00 03/01/2007
Knesset plenum passes the State Budget for 2007
By Zvi Zrahiya, Haaretz Correspondent
The Knesset passed the 2007 State Budget late Wednesday night, with 63 in favor, 31 against, and 6 abstaining. The 2007 budget stands on NIS 295.4 billion.
MK Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) did not participate in the vote. "The 2007 budget is completely Netanyahu's budget. There is no sign of a new economic order; it includes privatizing social services- something that a social-democratic party cannot agree to," she said.
MK Marina Solodkin (Kadima) also was not present at the vote because her proposal to cut NIS 60 million from the Wisconsin Plan was not passed.
Earlier Wednesday, the Knesset plenum passed the 2007 Economics Arrangement Law, a hodgepodge of treasury proposals that accompanies the State Budget every year.
The law aims 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.
The law was passed by 60 votes to 26. MK Yitzhak Galanti of the Pensioner's Party was the only coalition member to vote against. Five MKs abstained from voting, including coalition members Shelly Yachimovitch (Labor) and Marina Solodkin (Kadima). United Torah Judaism members Ya'akov Litzman, Meir Porush and Shmuel Halpert also abstained.
Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson said ahead of the Wednesday vote that he is willing to consider changing the format of the Economic Arrangements Law, as long as an alternative method of legislating economic laws is established.
The Economic Arrangements Law has in the past served the government in enacting a number of structural economic reforms that would not necessarily have received Knesset approval on their own, while also preventing the implementation of many laws passed by the Knesset.
"Nothing other than the Torah of Israel is sacred. The Economic Arrangements Law can stand to be tested," said the finance minister.
However he added that "one thing must be clear - the Economic Arrangements Law was established because supplementary laws and other issues must be passed along with the budget."
"The responsibility has to be mutual," he added, saying that the Economic Arrangements Law can't be eliminated unless the Knesset passes other economic laws.
"We have a growing economy," Hirchson said in reference to the cabinet's current economic policy, "we have more work places, the unemployment rate is in decline, and the trends will remain positive. We've been fighting a difficult war in the economic zone as well. It's very easy during this time to pull the Israeli economy down to lows it hadn't known before the [Lebanon] war."