Japan Press Weekly

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2009 January 14 - 20 [POLITICS]

LDP-Komei-controlled Lower House railroad through supplementary budget bill

The Liberal Democratic and Komei parties on January 13 used their majority force to have the House of Representatives railroad through a second supplementary budge focusing on two-trillion yen cash handouts along with some other related bills.

The Japanese Communist Party voted against these bills. The Democratic Party of Japan and the Social Democratic Party walked out of the chamber before the vote was taken, and the People’s New Party was absent from the session.

Taking the floor to denounce the bills on behalf of the JCP prior to the vote, Kasai Akira said, “It is outrageous for the House of Representatives to ram the budget bills through after only three days of discussion.”

Kasai demanded that the “cash handout” program be withdrawn. He said, “It is not an effective means of boosting the economy because it was put forward as an election ploy using public funds and also because it is conditioned by a consumption tax increase in FY 2011.

Kasai also pointed out that the budget bill calls for tax money to be used to bail out financial institutions incurring losses in money games without taking necessary measures to deal with the jobs crisis and other hardships.

After the vote, JCP Diet Policy Commission Chair Kokuta Keiji protested the forcible passage of the budget bill, saying, “The most important issue the current Diet should address is employment.”

The JCP has been calling for Diet hearings on the present massive layoffs to hear from Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) executives or other top business leaders as well as from contingent workers who have been fired.

“To have forcibly taken a vote without holding a discussion on the need to call for such hearings is absolutely impermissible,” said Kokuta.

He went on to say, “Seventy to eighty percent of the public is opposed to the ‘cash handout’ program. The committee should have withdrawn this plan.”