Likud MK Regev slams Trajtenberg committee findings

Labor's Yacimovich says recommendations “cynical, deeply capitalist”; Kadima calls socioeconomic report “a resounding disappointment.”

By LAHAV HARKOV
Miri Regev311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Miri Regev311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
MK Miri Regev (Likud) slammed the Trajtenberg Committee’s report, following the press conference on the committee’s findings on Monday.
“There’s nothing new here,” she said. “There is no news for the people of Israel, who will wake up in the morning and continue paying the expensive cost of living.
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“The middle class who is working, paying taxes and doing reserve duty will continue to crash under the burden of high taxes,” Regev explained, demanding that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu act immediately “to ensure that the cost of living will be significantly lowered, so that citizens can buy or rent homes for a reasonable price.”
“That is the only way to answer the public protests,” Regev added. “There is no reason to continue a situation in which a young couple cannot buy a home in Israel.
Houses are not only for the wealthy.”
Regev said that she supports the committee’s recommendations on early childhood education and direct taxation, but said “these are only a drop in the ocean,” and that Trajtenberg did not “give a real answer to the housing crisis or the cost of living.”
“The recommendations do not give hope to young people or justice to the weak and the elderly,” she added.
According to newly-elected Labor Party chairwoman Shelly Yacimovich, Trajtenberg’s recommendations “cynically take advantage of the protests in order to implement a deeply capitalist policy.”
“The Trajtenberg Committee’s recommendations are part of the same disease that led to wider gaps, a crashing middle class and poverty among working people, and certainly not part of the medicine,” Yacimovich said.
“Allowing imports without limits will leave thousands without jobs and destroy Israeli industry,” she added.
“Trajtenberg’s recommendations are pointless as long as they do not include a larger budget and do not utilize the massive surplus from tax collection,” Yacimovich explained. “This is nothing but a game played within the budget’s framework that probably will never even be implemented.”
Kadima called the Trajtenberg Committee’s report “a resounding disappointment.”
“The Israeli public expected a true change in the state’s priorities, but received a manufactured attempt to cover up the social outcry with a bandage,” a party spokesman said.
Kadima leader Tzipi Livni demanded from Netanyahu to shorten the Knesset’s summer recess, which ends in October, immediately, so that a new budget may be drafted.
She also appointed Knesset Control Committee chairman Ronnie Bar-On (Kadima) to study the report and propose an alternative plan of action.
“The report seems to have correct, but incomplete recommendations that must stand the test of implementation,” the party spokesman explained. “They do not hide the massive gap that remains between the just demands of hundreds of thousands who took to the streets, and the result that makes the Netanyahu government’s crooked priorities permanent.”
Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz called the committee meant to respond to social protests “Trajtenbluff.”
“The committee’s findings only scratch the surface of the problem,” Horowitz said.
“Who is supposed to implement them? Netanyahu? Ministry of Finance bureaucrats? The Knesset Finance Committee, which is run by UTJ? Just like Manuel Trajtenberg himself said: Most of the crises are left without a solution.”
Horowitz added: “The problem is still our prime minister, and as long as he stays, it will not end.”