"All this for a loaf of bread?"

from haaretz

Gov't said set to put off budget vote amid bread price row
By Haaretz Service

The coalition will delay by two days a scheduled Monday Knesset vote on the 2006 State Budget, after several Pensioners and Labor legislators voiced strong objections to a hike in the price of basic bread, Army Radio reported.

The step followed a warning by a senior Pensioners party legislator that his faction could bolt the Kadima-led government over the price rise. Several Labor MKs threatened to boycott the Monday vote, citing the bread issue.

The NIS 284.2 billion budget, together with the Economic Arrangements Law, were to have been brought before the Knesset for its first reading on Monday.

But Pensioners MK Moshe Sharoni said Monday morning that if the faction was unable in the Knesset Finance Committee to overturn the decision to raise the price of basic bread, the party might leave the coalition.

"We didn't come here for the chairs. I'm asking myself where the Labor Party is in all of this, the so-socially minded party, which constantly sang the mantra of social welfare? Where are they now?"

Labor MK Shelly Yachimovich, saying that the price rise in basic bread "hurts only the poor," said that changes would be made to the budget before its final reading.

Yachimovich and fellow Labor lawmakers Nadia Hilu and Yoram Marciano all planned to boycott the Monday vote in protest, the radio said.

Sharoni called the timing of the price hike "unfortunate," adding that the government's way of thinking was "abnormal and anomalous."

"The government is giving NIS 1.3 billion to Shas, and doesn't have a few millions to allocate in order to keep from raising the price of bread.

"I'd like to ask, 'How many electronic engineers have come out of Shas to date? How many academics came out of all the billions they have wasted?"

Sharoni said he believed that the other six members of the Pensioners Knesset faction shared his views on the bread price rise. "We are an independent party, and we will decide on the basis of what is good for the pensioners. We don't make our decisions on the basis of what is good for Kadima."

...and it starts to crumble from within

J.

Quote from Aladdin (1992)

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The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
– Abraham Lincoln