The Knesset's Interior Committee on Monday met to discuss the bill to tax disposable bags, with a haredi MK blasting Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) for the high cost of living.
"We are in a period the likes of which I do not remember," MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) said. "The cost of living is skyrocketing, families are not managing to close the month, everything is rising."
"I speak with factory owners who are forced to fire employees who bring home the bread, and this evil government, instead of dealing with the citizens' economy, quickly advances another draconian law from the workshop of the most failed minister in the State of Israel's history - levying another tax on families and citizens from the middle class."
He added, "We will make every effort to ensure that this bad law does not pass. We will bring down this evil government and fix all of the damage that it has already managed to do."
During the discussion, MK Uri Maklev, also of United Torah Judaism, demanded the tax be changed, and that the public be reimbursed for every plastic bag that they return to the supermarket, in a fashion similar to the reimbursement for glass bottles.
"Just yesterday, the citizens of Israel finished a holiday for which the grocery shopping cost more, and the government is already bringing a new decree," Maklev said. "Every day we wake up to a new decree. Not every problem is solved by levying fines on the public!"