Will Labor party back budget?
‘Labor won’t back anti-social budget’
National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer slams Finance Ministry, warns Labor party would quit government should budget fail to address socioeconomic problems
TEL AVIV – The Labor party would quit the government if it perceives the 2006 budget to be “anti-social,” National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer warned in an interview with Ynet.
Ben-Eliezer added that “the nature of the budget, no less than issues of foreign policy, is an unequivocal condition for staying in the government.”
“The socioeconomic situation is unacceptable,” he said. “There are 300,000 unemployed people here, hundreds of thousands who work for manpower agencies under terrible terms. What do we offer them?”
‘Budget must address unemployment and poverty’
Ben-Eliezer has already made life difficult for Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by checking his ambitious reform plan to divide and privatize the Electric Company and refineries.
And with disengagement soon in the offing, Ben-Eliezer plans to butt heads with Netanyahu over the budget. Notably, in 2002, Ben-Eliezer caused the national unity government to fall over a dispute regarding the 2003 budget.
He now says the upcoming budget must address unemployment and poverty, and also feature closer monitoring of socioeconomic laws.
“We have to transfer budgets, which up until now were wasted in the settlements, to the Negev and Galilee,” he said.
