野 "Government and Ruling Party Attempt to Increase Budget Only for Lee Jae-myung's Election Support"

Lee Jong-bae, Chairman of the National Assembly Budget and Accounts Committee, is presiding over the 2022 Budget Adjustment Subcommittee meeting at the National Assembly on the 19th. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

[Asia Economy Reporter Naju-seok] On the 29th, the People Power Party condemned the government and ruling party for attempting to increase the budget solely for election support for Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, in relation to next year's budget proposal. The People Power Party demanded direct support for vulnerable groups affected by COVID-19.

Members of the People Power Party's Special Committee on Budget and Accounts stated in a press release that "While the government supports the large-scale issuance of local love gift certificates, which replaced the nationwide disaster relief fund that candidate Lee and the Democratic Party reluctantly withdrew due to strong public backlash, the ruling party is trying to unilaterally and arbitrarily increase the election support budget for candidate Lee Jae-myung by leveraging their numerical superiority. We strongly condemn the government and ruling party's budget dictatorship that thoroughly ignores budgets directly related to people's livelihoods, such as direct support for small business owners and excluded industries, and childcare welfare budgets, as demanded by the opposition."

They introduced that "Although next year's budget is a super-large budget, the government is pressuring the opposition to accept only about 4 trillion won, which is less than 1% of the government's proposed budget, as a cut, and is even pushing to increase total expenditure by revising revenue estimates to include additional expected excess tax revenue."

They continued, "The government is refusing to accept the People Power Party's strong demand for swift and substantial direct support for small business owners, self-employed individuals, and excluded industries suffering losses, by cutting down on mysterious New Deal projects and unnecessary new projects prepared at the end of the Moon Jae-in administration, as well as projects with low execution rates."

Furthermore, "The government insists that aside from raising the minimum loss compensation support for small business owners requested by the ruling party (from the existing 100,000 won to 200,000 won), only loan support is possible instead of the direct cash support demanded by the People Power Party. We strongly demand an increase in direct support that allows vulnerable workers such as small business owners, self-employed individuals, those in the blind spots of loss compensation in culture, sports, and tourism industries, and workers in corporate taxis, charter buses, and non-public route buses to recover," they stated.

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