One of the recent fights for the new budget and the draft law was the fight for the supplementary "guaranteed income" - havtachat hachnassa - for avreichim.
Avreichim used to get this funding from the government, as a form of welfare. The Supreme Court put an end to it, saying it was discriminatory as it only applied to avreichim. Since then the Haredi parties, specifically UTJ, have been trying to find creative ways to rewrite the regulations of such a welfare payment in a way that would not be considered discriminatory.
Today they succeeded in passing their latest attempt, and students will benefit from it as well, which should help it get past the test of the courts.
What I find interesting is one point mentioned by Kikar. And that is, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman succeeded in lowering the requirement for learning from 45 hours weekly to 40 hours.
So, the irony in this, or strange part of it if not ironic, Haredi MKs fought to lessen the required learning time of avreichim. Haredi MKs fought to allow avreichim to learn less. Can you imagine the screaming we'd have heard had Yair Lapid done this?
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