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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: May 31, 2006 |
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Israel's Cabinet on Tuesday approved cuts in defense spending as part of its passage of the 2006 budget.
The new draft of the budget -- which must still be approved by parliament -- includes a more than $100 million cut in defense spending. The defense budget in 2005 was about $11 billion.
A total of about $222 million will be transferred from a previous version of the budget to pay for deals the leading Kadima Party made with its coalition partners.
The 2006 budget should have been passed by the end of last March at the latest, but internal political turmoil made that impossible. In March 28 elections, Kadima, led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, won a narrow victory and had to bring other parties into a ruling coalition -- pledging budget expenditures for the parties' priority programs.
The seven ministers of the Labor Party abstained in the vote due to the opposition of party leader Amir Peretz, the defense minister.
The vote put Labor in an awkward position since the budget does not include any adjustments in social welfare spending, and the party ran on a platform to fight poverty.
The budget must now pass three votes in the parliament, the Knesset. |
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