Government's budget-slashing measures raise many questions: JCP Ichida
Commenting on the Democratic Party-led government’s budget-slashing measures to scrutinize the budget requests from government offices for the next fiscal year starting April 1, 2010, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi criticized the screeners for avoiding moves to cut the most wasteful spending programs.
Ichida made the following points at a news conference in the Diet on November 16:
The budget request screeners are not targeting military expenditure, the biggest wasteful spending program, citing the procurement of a 120 billion yen helicopter carrier for the Maritime Self-Defense Force as well as the excessively expensive “missile defense” system.
While excluding these major items of wasteful spending from the check list, the budget-slashing team is focusing on smaller military expenditures, such as for SDF public relations and recruiting.
As regards the budget for the U.S. forces stationed in Japan, the team calls for wage cuts for Japanese workers at U.S. military bases. They do not call for cuts in Japan’s payment of 700 billion yen for the cost of constructing new facilities for U.S. forces in Guam.
They are only scrutinizing cost-efficiency as the way to carry out budget cuts, arbitrarily ignoring the opinions of those actually working on the ground in regard to the budget.
As regards the health insurance system, the team argues that short-term inpatients should be asked to pay more for food as well as for beds on the grounds that the cost they pay now is lower than those for long-term inpatients.
These arguments will be used to introduce additional burdens on the public at large.
The budget-slashing plan has been implemented in accordance with the Administrative Reform Law, which was enacted in 2006 under the Koizumi Cabinet, and civilian members in the budget examiners’ team include those who took part in the promotion of the neo-liberal “reform” policy under the government of Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro.
- Akahata, November 17, 2009