The Knesset Finance Committee is going to discuss this week the latest issue agitating Israeli society–charges that President Ephraim Katzir is spending too much of the taxpayers’ money for his household and personal expenses. The charges, new to Israeli life, were published Friday in Haaretz and picked up by most other newspapers. They were the prime topic of conversation in social circles over the weekend.
The matter came up because the Knesset must soon approve an IL 1:570 million Presidential house-hold budget for the 1974-75 fiscal year, a seven percent increase over the current budget. Haaretz charged that the President has overspent his present budget by IL 700,000 and that the proposed new budget contains two items that never were included in the budgets of previous Presidents–IL 10,000 for “clothing for the President and his wife” and IL 14,800 for “food products,” above and beyond “food for receptions,” which Haarlem claimed will cost some IL 50,000 in the next fiscal year.
The President’s Office initially had no comment on the Haarlem article. However, a statement over the weekend noted that during the past year, and particularly since the Yom Kippur War, Presidential activities increased considerably. The number of delegations from abroad calling on the President is many times greater than in previous years and Katzir has broadened the scope of the President’s Office, the statement said. It stated further that certain one-time expenses linked to the taking of office by a new President were covered by a supplementary budget which had been approved by competent authorities.
Haarlem published a list of alleged excessive expenditures by the President which raised many eyebrows here, especially in view of Katzir’s frequent exhortations to the public to adopt more modest living standards in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and his stress on the need to close Israel’s social and economic gap.
According to Haarlem, Katzir employs six more staff members than were approved; his office pays IL 1100 a month to rent an apartment for his personal secretary; his office spends IL 3000 a month for flowers “because the President loves flowers”; and IL 50,000 a year is spent to maintain Katzir’s home in Rehoboth where he continues his scientific work at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
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