The time has come, in addition to the tales of horror about Greece and Spain, for the Israeli public to earn the right to transparency by the government about expenditures on various segments of the population.
Maybe the Israeli citizen has the right to know what the defense establishment is doing with its money. Maybe he has the right to receive regular accounts about the money that the Israel Tax Authority foregoes each year in tax planning and who are the main beneficiaries of this. In general, hasn’t the time come that, due to the need to close the budget hole, for Israel's citizens to decide what is more important to them and what is less important?
As things appear at the moment, the current fiscal measures will be no different from similar measures we've been hit with in recent years. A need is discovered to immediately close a budget hole, and a fiscal package is drawn up that includes raising the tax burden by NIS 13 billion, alongside a series of so-called "cuts" to ministries' budgets, some real and some fictitious.
The budget hole is an opportunity, but instead of exploiting it to discuss national priorities, as the Bank of Israel has demanded, we are getting the ritual in which the media talks about "austerity" and the Ministry of Finance talks about "responsibility", while advising the country's people to look at Greece and Spain. The story of a ritual foretold.
What does this expected ritual not include? There is no debate about priorities, no discussion about where, and to whom, the money is going and what is done with it. A few headlines about political maneuvering, a few interviews with the finance minister and the prime minster, a short vote, and that's it. On to the next round.
The writing was in the report
Buried somewhere in a Bank of Israel report published earlier this year is a worrying remark about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. The report states: "The government deficit, adjusted for the business cycle, rose to 3.3% of GDP, back to the level of the early 2000s. Meeting the deficit cap and public spending cap, and significantly reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio is a major challenge for the coming years, and will require major government decisions about national priorities."
Two things in this sentence should worry Netanyahu. The first is the statement about "major government decisions". The second, and more important, refers to "national priorities". But the entire substance of the present government's economic activity is based, one way or another, on an effort to avoid decisions, and, more importantly, genuine public debate about national priorities.
Settlers, kindergartens, and the Iranian Bomb
Throughout the government's term of office, instead of long-term planning, we've received the pretense in the form of the biennial budget. Instead of policy based on multiyear growth rates, we've received a policy of zigzags, based on the political forces of the moment. If there was a need to placate settlers, they were promised hundreds of millions of shekels for construction beyond the Green Line; if there was a need to squelch the social protest, the Ministry of Finance was forced to swallow financing education for preschoolers.
If there was a need to finance the intimidation of the public over the "security situation", it was agreed to transfer a cumulative NIS 5-6 billion to the Ministry of Defense over and above what was promised by the Brodet Committee.
It is hard to know what the government's policy has been over the years, except the desire to avoid decisions. So instead of a serious and decisive debate, for months, we have received political maneuvering, the addition of parties to the coalition, the splitting of parties, and all kinds of measures aimed at postponing the inevitable until after the deluge.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 29, 2012
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2012