Last update - 00:00 09/07/2007
Aides: Olmert's patience with Barak is running out
By Haaretz Staff
Officials in the Prime Minister's Bureau said they believe that if Defense Minister and Labor Chairman Ehud Barak continues to try to differentiate himself from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and promote himself as a candidate for premier, Olmert will have to "call him to order."
The officials said Labor will have to support the across-the-board budget cut approved Sunday by the cabinet when it comes before the Knesset Finance Committee.
"We have not yet reached the point where Olmert has to say to Barak 'that's enough,' but if Labor opposes the budget cuts in the Finance Committee, it's not impossible that the point will come," an official in Olmert's bureau said.
The combined NIS 1.3 billion in cuts - which will not affect the health, welfare or higher education budgets - are designed to enable the government to finance various unplanned expenditures without raising the 2007 budget's original spending cap.
All of the votes against the move came from the parties Labor and Shas.
Finance Committee member MK Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) said she would vote against the cuts, which she called "unnecessary, unrealistic, harmful and baseless." According to Yachimovich, this is an aggressive move by the prime minister and the finance minister. "I'm sure the other Labor members of the Finance Committee [Avishay Braverman and Orit Noked] will do exactly as I do, as the Labor ministers also did," she said.
Labor Party officials said in private conversations that Barak will be evaluated by his continued opposition to the budget cuts. They said this would be the only way to know whether the opposition of the Labor ministers stemmed from matters of principle or political considerations.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's Bureau continued to send barbs Barak's way: "The opposition of the Labor ministers to the cuts stemmed from political considerations par excellence," an official in the bureau said. "Barak and his ministers were determined from the outset to vote against the cuts, even before the cabinet meeting started. They came with the intention of blowing things up."
An interesting exchange developed during Sunday's cabinet meeting between two sworn adversaries: Vice Premier Haim Ramon and Barak. Ramon suggested to Barak that discussions on the defense budget be postponed and not included in the proposed cuts brought to a vote Sunday.
Barak answered Ramon jokingly, "When I was prime minister you used to tease me for all the ploys I pulled in cooperation with the Finance Ministry; now I can say - you were right."