Herzog: Budget Unacceptable – No Provision For Making Me Electable

“For too long, the reins have been held by a small group of people representing the majority of voting Israelis.”

Jerusalem, September 2 – Opposition leader Isaac Herzog laced into the government’s proposed budget today, saving his most vociferous criticism for the budget’s complete lack of programs to make him an appealing candidate for prime minister.

The 329.5 billion-shekel budget for 2015-2016 passed a government vote early last month, and deliberations began today in the Knesset. The two-year budget calls for an increase of 13.8 billion over and above that figure for 2016-2017, with a projected deficit of just under 3%. None of those billions, however, will be allocated to any effort to make Herzog electable, an omission that the Opposition leader says “borders on criminal negligence” and “unjustly cements control of this country only in the hands of people whose policies resonate with a majority of the electorate.”

As part of the budget deliberations before it is put to a vote before the full plenum, Herzog took the podium to air his party’s objections. He slammed what he and other Opposition lawmakers called inadequate measures to help struggling families, dangerous cuts to social services, irresponsible revenue forecasts, and the greatest travesty of all: not a single shekel devoted to convincing a sufficient number of Israelis that he possesses the gravitas and charisma necessary to command an election. Those of us who, collectively, could not muster even an alliance representing the majority have been left out in the cold as government after government passed laws and implemented policies over our objections. All this was done under the pretext of ‘democracy’ – as if that justifies not letting me be prime minister,” he charged.

Other MKs lent their support to Herzog’s critique. “Even when I led Kadima to electoral victory in 2009, I was unable to form a coalition with a legislative majority – and that was the last time the center-left had a chance to do anything,” recalled Tzipi Livni, now with Hatnuah, a part of Herzog’s Zionist Union alliance. “The polls had us winning this past March, but that proved illusory, kind of like my vision for a sustainable peace agreement with the Palestinians.”

“If the Left cannot achieve its ends via democratic means, what good is democracy?” asked Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On. “While it might not be reasonable to expect Netanyahu to abandon democracy entirely, would it hurt him to help out a fellow MK? The lack of any allocation to support a struggling legislator with prime ministerial ambitions demonstrates once again that Bibi has no real empathy.”