Those without a nanny

A bill with the promising tagline "Integrating mothers into the work force," under which payments for a nanny or day-care will be recognized as an income tax expense, has been passed in a preliminary reading. The bill - proposed by MKs Gideon Sa'ar, Zahava Gal-On, Uri Ariel, Ronit Tirosh and Orit Noked - relates to working mothers in the upper percentiles of the population, who earn enough to be compelled to pay income tax, and does not apply to the 66 percent of working women who do not make enough money to pay income tax, and presumably do not employ nannies.

This is only one example of disguising something that actually increases the gap between those with means and those without as a social benefit. While the next budget grants significant tax benefits to people earning mid-range and high incomes, those with low incomes will sustain an additional blow in the form of benefit allotments that will not be updated. Allotments that will be affected include income support; benefits for the elderly, survivors and the disabled; nursing care and unemployment payments.

While the disposable income of people in the upper percentiles will increase by hundreds of shekels, those in the lower income brackets will be negatively affected in real terms. Even the proposal to halt, for the meantime, the small minimum wage increase that was promised and the decision to allow for a lower minimum wage to people with disabilities - about a third of the regular minimum wage - signify encouragement to exploit cheap labor. When a worker with disabilities does the same work as someone without disabilities, there is no reason to pay him a third of the salary.

The 2007 budget is not Benjamin Netanyahu's budget, and it cannot be excused with the argument that it was set by the previous government. The budget expresses imbalance and a disregard for the importance of closing the gaps between rich and poor. The accepted explanation is that the second Lebanon war took over the entire social budget for the good of rehabilitating the army and the North. But the calculations show that raising the value-added tax to its previous rate, as the Bank of Israel recommended, could have financed at least the compensation payments for those residents of the North who were harmed, without touching the budget at all. The easiest thing is to take from the National Insurance Institute benefits, but there, every minor change harms hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are very difficult in any case.

The recent war depleted not only the inventory of the Israel Defense Forces, but also the storehouses of mutual assistance and solidarity. It was possible to see, almost under laboratory conditions, the difference between communities that still have remnants of mutual assistance and those in which everyone is left to his own devices. While kibbutzim took care of the elderly and the weak, in other communities, they were abandoned in bomb shelters without support or food. Poverty was the key component in the gap between those hurt by Katyusha rockets in the North, with the stronger ones finding ways to flee southward.

The rehabilitation of the army and the investment of billions in purchasing bombs to replace the 200,000 shells fired into Lebanon will not strengthen by one iota the residents of Kiryat Shmona and Safed, who could be seen for a moment on the nation's TV screens while the Katyushas were being fired and who disappeared once again into the abyss of forgetfulness after the war ended. It is doubtful whether any of them will ever enjoy the tax benefits for hiring a nanny. And for those who need nursing care themselves, it is doubtful whether any of them will get it once the budget for caregivers is cut.