Rep. Kim Jae-kyung, chairman of the National Assembly Special Budget Settlement Committee, said recently that he will try to strengthen the deliberation rights of the National Assembly, even if he has to reform the National Assembly Law.
The third-term lawmaker from the B District in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province and a member of the ruling Saenuri Party, claimed the current budget proposal is automatically approved if the National Assembly fails to act on the budget by Dec. 2, and the government has been taking advantage of the deadline almost every year.
During an interview with a local newspaper, the lawmaker said there have been signs that the parliamentary review of the budget process has been weakening, with the government not accepting the parliamentary opinions by hedging their answers. He plans to make proposals for reform of the National Assembly Law if the opposition parties agree to the changes.
Article No. 85 of the National Assembly Law stipulates that if the parliament fails to act on the budget bill by the deadline, Dec. 2, then the next day the budget bill will be considered before the plenary session of the parliament for approval, provided that the speaker has an agreement with all parties in the parliament to keep the budget bill for deliberation by the Special Budget Settlement Committee beyond the deadline.
Rep. Kim currently has been hard at work to prepare the proposal for the revision of the No. 65 Article, so the committee can have the rights to delay its deliberation of the national budget beyond the deadline.
He said the committee would not purposefully delay its deliberation of the national budget proposal, adding that the delay in the deliberation should be allowed only on unavoidable cases.
He said he will try to complete the committee’s budget deliberation during the Aug. 17-28 period for the review of next year’s national budget. But the committee’s budget items considered to be unnecessary will be cut from the budget, he said, to not only meet the deadline, but also allow the committee to fully do its job.
The chairman said the committee’s main job is to see that the national budget is used to create many new jobs, and at the same time help small business owners run their businesses well. He also said it is not right to look at the social overhead projects as projects intended to benefit lawmakers from the regions where those projects are to be undertaken. He will also see that unnecessary welfare spending is eliminated completely. He said when that spending is approved, it’s almost impossible to get rid of. He said the budgets for welfare projects should not undermine economic growth, indicating that the committee may opt to increase the national budget proposal for next year by expanding certain budget proposal items more than the government proposed, although the committee so far have been used to cutting the government national budget proposals.
He promised to be open minded about deliberating next year’s national budget, as the government has already opted to go for a supplementary budget to revive the economy.
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