You can’t say that Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman’s move to end daycare subsidies for yeshiva students was unexpected or that he didn’t give fair warning. His position on reducing government expenditures on subsidies and other benefits for the ultra-Orthodox was one of the main reasons Liberman didn’t join the right-wing coalition that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered him with the ultra-Orthodox parties during the two years of political crisis in Israel, even though on foreign policy he is on the extreme right of the map. 

Throughout the last election, Liberman insisted that the ultra-Orthodox must enter the workforce, military or national service, putting the issue at the center of his economic platform. He was the one who blocked any possibility of the ultra-Orthodox joining the current coalition. 

His first decision as finance minister concerning the ultra-Orthodox was to cancel the daycare subsidy for the children of full-time yeshiva students. In 2019, a third of Israel's budget for daycare subsidies — nearly 400 million new Israeli shekels ($122 million) a year, out of a budget of 1.2 billion shekels ($365 million) — went to ultra-Orthodox families where the father studies at a yeshiva for married men, while these families make up less than 10% of the population. Most yeshiva student families receive the full subsidy of 1,300 shekels ($396) to bring down the 2,000-shekel ($610) price of daycare per month. 

The subsidy for daycare is conditioned on both parents working — except when one parent is a university student, training for a profession or a yeshiva student. Liberman argues that university students and those in professional training need the subsidies for a limited period and their studies benefit the economy, whereas yeshiva students enjoy this status indefinitely and their lack of employment and training damage the economy.