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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: June 8, 2006 |
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The Israeli parliament on Wednesday belatedly approved the country's 2006 budget -- delayed more than two months by a general election and post election horse-trading -- which includes cuts in defense spending but fails to deliver the injection of funds to health and welfare programs pledged by coalition partner Labor in its election campaign.
The total budget of $56 billion reduces defense spending by more than $100 million from the 2005 appropriation of about $11 billion.
The 2006 budget, which should have been passed by the end of March, won parliamentary approval by a comfortable majority of 53 in favor to 22 against and five abstentions, with many of the 120 members absent from the chamber.
Failure to pass the budget would have been considered a vote of no confidence in the new government, triggering its resignation.
In the March 28 elections the newly-formed Kadima party, led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, won a narrow victory and had to bring other parties into a coalition -- pledging extra budget expenditures for the various parties' priority programs.
Olmert told the house after the vote that his government hoped to start drafting the 2007 budget soon. |
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