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2015/02/19
Okada stresses PM “should recognize there is a high possibility that disparities are widening”
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On February 19, the interpellatory session for the 2015 budget proposal started in the Committee on Budget in the House of Representatives. DPJ President Katsuya Okada was the first to take to the podium on behalf of the party. Following on from Prime Minister Abe’s responses in the debate held the previous week in the plenary session of the House of Representatives, he further developed arguments in relation to the following themes: (1) the Prime Minister’s perception of the issue of disparities, (2) the government response to the capture and killing of Japanese citizens by the Islamic extremist organization ISIL, and (3) the legalistic framework for national security.
First, Okada commented on the Prime Minister’s comment that “following the redistribution of income, disparities remain largely stable.” The DPJ President stated that disparities “should be perceived as an issue for the mid-term. I want the Prime Minister to accept this perception of the facts.” Okada went on to stress that it was essential for politicians to recognize the importance of effectively redistributing the fruits of economic growth, saying, “the government should expand the number of tax-payers in the highest income tax bracket to some extent, and raise the government’s ability to redistribute income across the board.” However, Abe showed a negative attitude to this suggestion, saying that any such tax increases would cause an exodus of wealthy Japanese overseas.
Okada went on to raise the issue of childhood poverty, referring to the fact that Japan's childhood poverty ratio is high amongst OECD nations, and in particular, that of households with a single parent or guardian is now at a level that ranks Japan as one of the lowest amongst them. He calls for an increase in the amount of childrearing support allowance paid to one-parent households, and went on to read out a letter he had received from a student receiving educational support. Okada finished by urging the Prime Minister to “do your utmost to raise the minimum income levels.”
Next, Okada referred to the fact that the Prime Minister and Chief Cabinet Secretary had been almost constantly away from the Prime Minister’s Office on electoral campaigning from the time when the first email message stating that Japanese citizen Kenji Goto had been captured by ISIL was received on December 3 2014 until December 19, 2014. He commented on the problem this posed with regard to Japan’s crisis management, with reference to the government response to the 2001 collision between a Japanese fishery training vessel and an American nuclear submarine, saying, “I thought that as a result of lessons learnt from the response to the Ehime Maru accident, the government had established an unwritten rule that the Chief Cabinet Secretary would in principle remain in the vicinity of the Prime Minister’s Office, and in the event of the Chief Cabinet Secretary being absent, the Prime Minister would be in his Office.”
Furthermore, Okada strongly criticized last year’s Cabinet decision permitting use of the right to collective defence, stating, “You have created a poor precedent by allowing this particular Cabinet to change, in such an irresponsible fashion, the interpretation of the Constitution that has been upheld by previous Cabinets, with virtually no debate in the Diet and without obtaining the understanding of the Japanese people.”
Following the session, Okada related his impressions of the debate to reporters, saying, “Our discussion of the legal framework for national security was on quite a shallow level and we were not able to hold a substantive debate. I had hoped that the Prime Minister would revise his opinion on disparity issues, and especially the problem of childhood poverty, and so posed questions on these subjects, but I think that there was no change in his stance on these matters.”
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