"Absurd" vs "Different from Previous Years": Ruling and Opposition Parties Disagree on Budget 'Cuts' First

Park Hong-geun "Depends on the attitude of the government and ruling party"
Joo Ho-young "Cannot reduce the amount like before"

[Asia Economy Reporters Naju-seok and Park Joon-yi] The ruling and opposition parties remain at a stalemate over next year's budget proposal, with no signs of narrowing their differences. Both sides agree on processing the budget within the regular session of the National Assembly, but they have yet to reconcile disagreements over the scale of budget cuts.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the 7th, National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo, Democratic Party Floor Leader Park Hong-geun, People Power Party Floor Leader Joo Ho-young, and Deputy Prime Minister for Economy Choo Kyung-ho met at the National Assembly to discuss the budget proposal. They held a 30-minute meeting, skipping formalities such as opening remarks, but only confirmed their differences. The possibility of additional meetings remains uncertain.

After the meeting, Floor Leader Park told reporters, "There is not much to say," adding, "Regarding the government's budget cuts, they continue to insist on an utterly unreasonable scale, so the gap remains wide and unresolved."

When asked whether he would return to the negotiation table, Floor Leader Park replied, "It depends on the attitude of the government and the ruling party," passing the ball to them.

Floor Leader Joo explained, "There were opinions on the total scale of next year's budget cuts, but the differences in views on the cuts were too large to reach an agreement." He added, "The government plans to reduce this year's expenditure by 24 trillion won and is legally required to allocate 40% to local governments, which reduces the discretionary budget available to the central government. I explained that the scale of cuts should not be the same as in previous years. The Democratic Party demanded detailed data and said they could not agree to the low scale of cuts, so we parted ways."

Considering the usual flow of budget negotiations in the National Assembly, where a certain portion of cuts is decided from the government's original proposal and then increases are discussed based on the cut scale, the floor leaders of both parties have failed to secure even the minimum basic premise for budget negotiations.