Japan Press Weekly

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2024 March 27 - April 2 [POLITICS]

Diet passes FY2024 budget incorporating largest-ever military budget

The government-proposed 112-trillion-yen budget for fiscal 2024 was approved at the House of Councilors plenary session on March 28 by the majority force of the Liberal Democratic and Komei parties. The Japanese Communist Party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and other opposition parties voted against the budget.

In discussions prior to the vote, JCP lawmaker Yamazoe Taku criticized the government-drafted budget for failing to deal with the economic issues Japan is currently facing: the rising cost of living and the fall in real wages which has continued for 22 months. He urged the government to implement policies that help to realize wage hikes effectively, such as by levying a tax on large corporations’ internal reserves to fund support for smaller businesses and by establishing fair treatment for non-regular workers.

Yamazoe pointed out that while military spending will reach an all-time high of eight trillion yen, up 1.1 trillion yen from the previous year, the 2024 budget aims to reduce social spending through various measures including cutting state remuneration paid to home-visit nursing care institutions and keeping pension benefits lower than the inflation rate. He demanded that the government increase social warfare programs-related expenditure drastically rather than promote and fund a military buildup.