Your Love Language
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Whirlwind week ends with unity government in Israel, Netanyahu remaining at the helm
Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu will serve as prime minister for 18 months before handing the premiership as part of a rotation to Blue and White challenger Benny Gantz.
By Dov Lipman
After nearly a year of political paralysis, Israel is finally on its way towards a national unity government as the nation battles against the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic. Benny Gantz, who has stood as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief rival through three consecutive election cycles, announced that his party faction would join Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition to form a new government.
According to the terms of the agreement, Netanyahu will serve as prime minister for 18 months before handing the premiership as part of a rotation to Gantz, who will serve under Netanyahu as deputy prime minister and defense minister for the first 18 months, and then become prime minister in September 2021.
Gantz’s dramatic move jolted Israel’s political system. The agreement led to the collapse of Gantz’s own Blue and White Party.
Senior party members Yair Lapid and Knesset member Moshe Ya’alon, who each led separate factions within the larger Blue and White alignment, rejected joining a government led by Netanyahu. The pair have officially split from Gantz, and filed a motion to retain the name Blue and White as they prepare to sit in opposition to the government.
From the Knesset floor, where he currently serves as temporary speaker, Gantz explained his decision, saying, “This is not the time for fighting and splits. This is the time for responsible statesmanship, patriotism and leadership.”
He called to the citizens of Israel and said, “Let’s join hands and lead Israel out of this crisis.”
Likud Knesset member Yoav Kisch told JNS that his party “blesses Netanyahu and Gantz for this courageous step. We are dealing with a health and economic crisis like we have never seen, and the public demanded that we as leaders act with responsibility.”
Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, of the right-wing Yamina Party, told JNS that “this is the right thing for Israel in this emergency.”
Knesset member Yair Lapid attacked Gantz for breaking Blue and White’s promise not to sit with Netanyahu as he awaits the start of a trial on three separate counts of bribery and breach of trust. “He crawled into Netanyahu’s government … gave up without a fight,” said Lapid. “Over a million voters feel cheated, and that their votes were stolen and given to Netanyahu.”
“Corona,” he said, referring to the pandemic spreading around the globe, “is not a permit to give up on our values.”
Knesset member Merav Michaeli of the Labor Party sarcastically congratulated Gantz for “joining a government led by an indicted prime minister.” She then turned towards him and said, “You promised not to join with Netanyahu. There is no unity with those who are destroying Israel.”
Details of new coalition
The details of the new coalition are still being worked out, but it will most likely include 75 seats: Likud (36), Gantz’s Israel Resilience (15), Shas (9), United Torah Judaism (7) and Yamina (6), along with MKs Tzvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel from the Telem faction. Hauser and Hendel are former Netanyahu advisers who have been the strongest advocates for a unity government.
Preliminary reports indicate that Netanyahu will give Gantz’s party an equal number of ministries to his own much larger Likud Party. Netanyahu has agreed to appoint former Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of Staff and Gantz ally Gabi Ashkenazi as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Chili Tropper as Justice Minister.
It is unclear what role Netanyahu will have in 18 months once Gantz becomes prime minister because the law only permits only that governmental position to maintain office while under indictment. Ministers with other portfolios are required by law to resign. The new government could pass a revised law allowing a minister to serve while under indictment.
Gantz has also requested the economy, agriculture, environment, communications and culture ministries.
Several ministers, including from Netanyahu’s Likud, will be forced to relinquish their portfolios. Yamina chairman Bennett, who is set to vacate his current post as defense minister, told JNS that so far, “the news about portfolios is fake news. Netanyahu has not spoken to me about this issue as of yet.”
Edelstein’s quick return
In an amazing turnabout, Knesset member Yuli Edelstein, who resigned this week when the Supreme Court required him to call a vote for a new Speaker of the Parliament, will most likely return to his post in the new government.
The opposition will now likely be headed by Knesset member Yair Lapid, whose remaining Blue and White will be joined by the Labor-Meretz alignment, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party and the Joint Arab List.
Despite Gantz receiving the recommendation of 61 Knesset members to serve as prime minister, it quickly became clear that he could not form a government without linking up with Likud.
While the Joint List recommended Gantz over Netanyahu, the Arab alliance of parties was not set to join Blue and White in a coalition government, and many members of Blue and White also opposed such an alliance. Members of Netanyahu’s 58-seat right-wing and religious bloc similarly refused to join a Gantz-led government, leaving Gantz with few options and steering Israel towards a fourth consecutive election.
Netanyahu put out a direct public appeal while dealing with an escalating coronavirus crisis on Tuesday, saying, “Benny Gantz, this is a moment which tests leadership and national responsibility. The citizens of Israel need a unity government that will work to save their lives and their livelihoods. This is not the time for a fourth election. We both know that the gaps between us are small, and we can overcome them. Let’s meet now and establish a unity government. I am waiting for you.”
While the parties have agreed to form a government, intense negotiations are now taking place on the technical makeup of the coalition. Gantz’s party seeks legal mechanisms to ensure that Netanyahu will indeed turn the post of prime minister over to Gantz in September 2021, and not simply collapse the government and call for a new election once his 18 months as his term prime minister come to an end.
It’s been quite a month—quite a political year, in fact—from start to finish, with this agreement ending one of the most bitter and protracted election seasons in Israel’s history.
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Kim lays out the Democrat/Pelosi lard - disgusting. Stop and think about this. Government funding is based on last year's so next year the funding will go up because it will be based on these added funds.
Secondly, in one bill we have changed our entire attitude towards welfare. We have established the concept of paying not to work. I know it was necessary but watch what subsequently happens. The concept of more welfare has been koshered and thought it may take some times the spigots will eventually open.
Big-Government Contagion
Appropriators throw hundreds of billions at the virus—and at everything else.
By
The Senate did something good Wednesday night, passing a bill to inject liquidity into a virus-ravaged economy. It also did something dangerous, requiring the public to be on guard.
Members of Congress are pointing out the many parts of society aided by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, styled the Cares Act. Checks for American families. Some $377 billion for small business. Help for air carriers and other industries. Money for hospitals.Missing from their list is an important category, which underlines an inescapable fact: Government mostly “Cares” for government. Bills that hand out money are written by appropriators. And appropriators never miss an opportunity to expand departments, agencies, bureaus and commissions. A rough calculation suggests the single biggest recipient of taxpayer dollars in this legislation—far in excess of $600 billion—is government itself. This legislation may prove the biggest one-day expansion of government power ever.
Some of this money is required. Washington and the states are devoting significant resources to the virus response, and the bill earmarks funds for many specific and warranted purposes. A great deal of cash is going to frontline agencies—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services. The bill sends money to the Bureau of Prisons, to help control the virus’s spread among inmates; to the IRS for an extended tax-filing season; to the Transportation Security Administration “for cleaning and sanitization at checkpoints.” Are the amounts a bit excessive? No doubt. But let’s not quibble.
More concerning is the extent to which Democrats used the bill to tighten every fiber of the social safety net. Put aside the $260 billion for unemployment benefits, potentially necessary in light of record jobless claims. The bill throws $25 billion more at food stamps and child nutrition; $12 billion at housing; $3.5 billion to states for child care; $32 billion at education; $900 million at low-income heating assistance; $50 million at legal services for the poor and so on. This is a massive expansion of the welfare state, seemingly with no regard to the actual length of this crisis.
There’s also the money appropriators threw at government for no purpose other than the throwing. Every outpost gets dollars, most for nothing more than the general command “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.” NASA gets $60 million. Has the virus infected the sun’s corona? The National Archives gets $8 million. Will it put the virus on display? Many departments get cash for research, regardless of their relevance to today’s medical crisis. Perhaps the Energy Department will use its additional $99 million in “science” to gauge how the virus responds in a nuclear reactor.
Then there’s the outright pork. The Forest Service gets $3 million for “forest and rangeland research,” $27 million for “capital improvement and maintenance,” and $7 million for wildfire management. The bill shovels $75 million to the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, $25 million to the Kennedy Center, an odd $78,000 “payment” to the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development. A water project in central Utah gets $500,000. Appropriators can sneak a lot into 880 pages.
The bill sends $150 billion to state governments, on top of the dollars for unemployment, health care and education. Some of this money will be used to backstop local governments struggling with virus response, or with the economic consequences of the shutdown. But for all the Democratic demands of oversight on the bill’s business loans, the state dollars have no real strings attached. Should a locality choose to use its dollars to create new nonsensical business regulations, so be it.
Republicans waved much of this through, viewing it as the Democratic price for urgently needed business liquidity. But they should understand the left has every intention of making these spending levels the new normal. Long after this virus has passed, long after the economy is recovering, Democrats will cry foul at any cut. Should they win the presidency or the Senate this fall, the chances of rolling any of this back fall even further.
The bill’s real failure is that it makes no distinctions between temporary and permanent expansion of government. The state has a role in short-term crises, and lawmakers have an obligation to allocate the resources to respond. But Democrats successfully exploited the crisis to expand the power of government overall—perhaps for the long term. That’s especially perverse, given it was government that imposed the restrictions that shut down the economy, necessitating this rescue bill in the first place.
The Trump administration and GOP lawmakers should have been making this distinction all along, and they’d be wise to start reassuring voters immediately of their intent to rationalize the system once the urgent moment passes. Coronavirus has done enough damage. We don’t need it to also become the excuse for a permanent government power grab.
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