Shii proposes budget recompilation on 3 key points to Hatoyama

Japan Press Weekly

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Shii proposes budget recompilation on 3 key points to Hatoyama

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo held talks with Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio in the Diet on February 17 and submitted a JCP proposal for a recompilation of the FY2010 national draft budget to fundamentally redress the past undemocratic administration and to change the political course.

Shii said: The ‘structural reform’ policy which the Liberal Democratic-Komei government pursued claiming that the economy will develop and living conditions will improve only when large corporations are made stronger has failed. However, the draft budget of the DPJ-led government has three key problems that go against the people’s wishes for politics to be changed.

The JCP chair proposed the following three points: (1) immediately remedy the “scars” left by the LDP-Komei government’s policy of cutting social services, including the discriminatory medical services against elderly people aged 75 and older; (2) revitalize local economies by stabilizing jobs and businesses to protect livelihoods from the economic crisis; (3) seek budgetary resources by not making the military budget and the favorable taxation to large corporations exempt from budget cuts.

During the talks, Shii said to Hatoyama, “The key is to establish social rules in regard to the job market as well as rules guaranteeing fair dealings between large and small corporations”. Hatoyama said that a study should be made on how to implement an appropriate tax on the internal reserves of large corporations.

Referring to the question of small-and medium-sized enterprises, in which the prime minister once agreed with Shii’s description of the importance of local factories as Japan’s treasure, Shii demanded that the government directly help them by subsidizing their fixed costs for machine leases and housing rents. Hatoyama said that machines on lease be regarded as being similar to loans, with the result that the user needs only to pay interest payments.

As immediate tasks in taxation, Shii urged the prime minister to raise the maximum tax rate and review the favorable taxation on investment in securities. Shii said, “The question is whether the tax system should allow the further increasing of social gaps or correct such gaps.” The prime minister said that it is a question for study that can be discussed within the DPJ at its research commission on the tax system.

At a news conference following the talks, Shii said, “The JCP position is fundamentally different from that of the government and we demand that policies be drastically changed. However, amid the serious economic difficulties facing the people, we will do whatever we can to have policies changed for any better.”

- Akahata, February 18, 2010