Bill to delay budget passes first reading
Amendment to Basic Law allows State Budget to be approved in November, comes as part of coalition agreement with Kahlon.
Following lengthy deliberations that ended in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Knesset passed the first reading of a proposed amendment to the Basic Law: The State Budget that will allow the government to delay approval of the budget to early November, with a 14-month budget through to the end of 2016 on the cards.The amendment was approved by a majority of 57 coalition members versus 55 opposition MKs.
Under the existing law, the government is required to secure final approval from the Knesset for the state budget within 100 days of its establishment. Failure to do so, under the current law, would see the government fall.
The proposed amendment extends this period and determines that the budget will be submitted to the Knesset for its first reading within 101 days, with final approval to come within 175 days, on November 5. The change is part of the coalition agreements, in keeping with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon's demand for more time to prepare a two-year budget.
This is the second time in the space of two weeks that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government has made moves to amend a Basic Law, with the various Knesset committees that are supposed to discuss legislative change yet to be manned.
Two weeks ago, the Knesset needed just three days to lift the restrictions laid out in the Basic Law: The Government with respect to the number of ministers and deputy ministers in the new cabinet.
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"Someone is trying to strip the work of the Knesset of all substance," Yesh Atid MK Ofer Shelah charged during the debate on the proposed amendment. And according to Knesset's legal advisor, Eyal Yinon, while the amendment is legally possible, it does undermine the status of the country's Basic Laws.
"All we asked for was a time extension," said Deputy Finance Minister Yitzhak Cohen (Shas) on summing up the Knesset debate. "If it took an entire night to discuss something so trivial, what's going to happen when we get to the substantial and significant clauses?"
Until the budget is approved in November, the government ministries will operate on monthly sums totaling one-twelfth of their 2014 budgets.
This means, in essence, that the government will not be functioning and will not be carrying out any new plans or programs almost until the end of the year.
