The aftershock from last week's publication of the Treasury's 2009 budget proposal is still reverberating throughout the haredi community. With the cabinet slated to vote on the proposal on Sunday, fiscal issues have been pushed to center stage in the haredi media.
Haredi newspapers lamented the proposed cut of NIS 200 million from the NIS 400m. yeshiva budget, which pays stipends to post-high school-age men who study in yeshivot. In its heyday, before Shinui joined Ariel Sharon's government in 2003, this budget was NIS 1 billion.
This weekend's Yom Leyom, Shas's mouthpiece, led with a story about the party's failure to find a sympathetic ear among Kadima's leading politicians for the haredi community's special budget needs.
The paper also attacked the Treasury's proposal to cut child allotments from NIS152 a month per child to NIS135, at a time when Shas's main political demand from any future prime minister is beefed-up child allotments. Shas is demanding an NIS 1b. addition, while the Treasury is hoping to cut NIS 500m. and reallocate about NIS 200m. of that to programs that help children, such as the hot lunch and extended school-day programs.
In other haredi papers, the trend was similar. The front-page headline of the weekly Bakehila was "A Broken Promise," which referred to Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's about-face on child allotments.