Leading members of the opposition harshly criticized the government’s proposed 2025 state budget on Monday, dismissing it as “disconnected” from reality and the “robbery,” ahead of the final vote needed for its passage.

The Knesset was debating the budget at a marathon session overnight Monday-Tuesday, with final votes set for Tuesday midday.

“What is on the Knesset table is not a budget, it is theft,” Opposition leader Yair Lapid told reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset.

Calling the NIS 756 billion ($203.5 billion) budget the “greatest robbery in the history of the country,” Lapid charged that “billions upon billions that are stolen from the money of the middle class, reservists, and taxpayers, are going into the pockets of corrupt businessmen, dodgers, and refusers.”

The 2025 budget is over 20 percent larger than last year’s financial plan, which the Knesset Finance Committee has said is largely a product of higher defense outlays. An unprecedented NIS 136 billion is earmarked for defense in the 2025 version.

Lapid also complained that the budget includes billions for ultra-Orthodox yeshivas whose students refuse to enlist in the IDF, while the state “exploits” the middle class and spends billions more to “maintain completely unnecessary government ministries” for political reasons.

Opposition lawmakers have harshly criticized the government for its plans to cut around NIS 3 billion ($814 million) across various ministries — affecting the salaries of public sector workers such as teachers and social workers while not touching funds for ultra-Orthodox educational institutions and ministries previously described as superfluous by treasury officials.

Earlier this month, the cabinet approved the allocation of NIS 5 billion ($1.3 billion) in coalition funds, including over a billion shekels for yeshivas. Various Haredi institutions and causes are set to receive hundreds of millions in additional funding.

“They didn’t raise taxes because of the war. The war is financed in other ways.........

© The Times of Israel