While most government ministers plan to support the 2015 budget, which will be voted on in the Cabinet tomorrow, Minister of Environmental Protection Amir Peretz has voiced harsh criticism of the budget, and has called it “anti-social.”
Peretz, who it seems will be one of the only ministers to vote against the budget, has attacked Minister of Finance Yair Lapid as well. “The Minister of Finance is acting like driver who is driving full speed in neutral,” Peretz told “Globes” today. “Sadly, I don’t see this trend changing. Every day, he checks what the popular issues that need dealing with are, and not the real struggles of Israeli society, and I won’t be a part of it. There is no Minister of Finance who holds real discussions here. The discussions surrounding the budget were discussions that were not worthy of the most basic socio-economic debate, to say the least. Tomorrow, there will be a discussion that is mostly protocol, in which many long hours will pass, at the end of which there will be a vote that is rooted in behind-the-scenes deals. I won’t be a partner to this,” said Peretz.
According to Peretz, despite Lapid’s claims that the budget is a social one, the budget that is to be approved tomorrow does not answer to social needs. “The budget that the Minister of Finance is submitting has no goals, no priorities, no enterprise, and it certainly does not deal with the central message that Lapid tried to market when he said that it is a ‘social’ budget. I have seen many budgets, and this is a mockery of budget. It makes a mockery of social needs, and a mockery of all the social trends needed at a time like this. The budget that is to be approved will perpetuate the situation in which social gaps continue to grow, instead of placing matters like the report to fight poverty at the center of budget and of action.”
The Minister of Environmental Protection plans to demand the adoption of the Alalouf Committee Report recommendations, and also to push forward an increase in the minimum wage at the cabinet meeting tomorrow. “I demand that they adopt the Committee to Fight Poverty Report in full, and I plan to again raise the matter of minimum wage,” he declared. “In 2006, we advanced the minimum wage law, which society yearned for, and then we set the target of NIS 4,600 a month by 2008. Unfortunately, only last year did we reach NIS 4,350, and, therefore, I believe we need to set a new target, and there is no instrument more attractive and significant in narrowing gaps than raising the minimum wage. All the claims that it will cause an economic crisis and layoffs - they all proved to be baseless. It caused greater economic activity, and created more jobs.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 6, 2014
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