Frequent Omissions in 'Cost Estimation' Improved... "Tricks Will Disappear"

National Assembly Steering Committee Approves Amendment to National Assembly Act
Cost Estimate Submitted Simultaneously to Bill Sponsor and Speaker
Elimination of Intentional or Accidental Non-Submission of Cost Estimates

[Asia Economy Reporter Naju-seok] The 'price tag' of bills, which was often omitted during the National Assembly's bill review process, will now be properly attached. This is because the cost estimate documents calculating the expenses involved in the bills, which were previously missing due to tricks or mistakes, will no longer be omitted during the National Assembly's bill review process.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to the National Assembly on the 2nd, the National Assembly Steering Committee held a plenary session on the 27th of last month and passed the 'Partial Amendment to the National Assembly Act.' This amendment includes a provision requiring the National Assembly Budget Office (NABO) to submit the cost estimate documents directly to both the members of the National Assembly and the Speaker before reviewing the bills. Previously, the documents were submitted only to the members, but now the Speaker has been added.

The current National Assembly Act requires that bills involving budgets or funds undergo cost estimation by NABO. This is to verify and review how much cost is involved in the respective bills. However, the current law allows the submission of the bill even if only a request for cost estimation is submitted before the bill is proposed, along with the method of receiving the cost estimate document. As long as the cost estimate document is submitted to the relevant standing committee before the National Assembly's review, the bill submission is permitted based on the request alone.

The problem was that there were frequent cases where only the request for cost estimation was submitted, but the actual cost estimate document was not provided. According to the National Assembly, the rate at which members requested cost estimate documents from NABO, received them, but failed to forward them to the relevant standing committees for review was 47.7% in 2018, 57.6% in 2019, and 55.1% in 2020. These incidents occurred because the members' offices either mistakenly or intentionally did not submit the cost estimate documents provided by NABO to the National Assembly.

The amended National Assembly Act aims to prevent such issues by requiring that when NABO sends the cost estimate documents, they must be sent not only to the members' offices but also to the Speaker and, effectively, to the National Assembly's Bill Office. By doing so, unnecessary steps are reduced, and it prevents the proposing members' offices from omitting the cost estimate documents either by mistake or intentionally. Except for special circumstances, the cost estimation details from NABO can now be reviewed together during the bill review process.

Seo Byung-su, a member of the People Power Party who proposed the amendment to the National Assembly Act containing these changes, said, "The cost estimation system operates to carefully scrutinize bills involving budgets or funds to prevent budget waste, but in reality, cost estimate documents were often not submitted, so I proposed this amendment." He added, "Once the amendment passes, cost estimate documents will be submitted before bill review, allowing the review to be conducted based on the cost estimation."

The amendment is now only awaiting the Legal Affairs and Judiciary Committee's systematic and textual review and the plenary session's approval.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.