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On May 20, the DPJ Recovery and Reconstruction Study Committee convened inside the Diet building. Following the meeting, the Secretary General of the Committee, Senior Vice Chair of the Policy Research Committee Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, spoke to reporters. He explained that Secretary General Katsuya Okada had made a report to the committee, stating that a Special Committee on reconstruction after the Great East Japan Earthquake had been established in the House of Representatives on May 19, with DPJ Diet member Toru Kikawada as Chair and Deputy Secretary General Osamu Fujimura as Senior Director. Okada had also reported on his visit to Fukushima prefecture on May 7 and 8, during which he had held discussions with local government officials and survivors of the disaster, and said he had petitioned the government regarding what he (Okada) described as “pressing issues in Fukushima prefecture relating to the Great East Japan Earthquake which the state should be involved in and should work to resolve.”
Next, Policy Research Committee Chair Koichiro Gemba reported on the construction of two teams, a supplementary budget team and a financial resources team, with respect to formulating party thinking on the second supplementary budget for fiscal 2011. He also reported that the reconstruction vision team were conducting investigations into how to eliminate duplicate loans relating to disaster expenses.
Diet Affairs Committee Chair Jun Azumi reported on the schedule for Diet debate on a basic law for reconstruction (tentative translation) and an amendment to the cabinet law. He said that Prime Minister Naoto Kan would travel overseas to attend the OECD’s 50th anniversary forum in Paris from May 24. Consequently, the party intended to proceed with active and flexible committee debate, taking into account the opinions of the opposition, to ensure that the legislation would pass the House of Representatives during the period from when debate in the Special Committee on Reconstruction starts on May 23 until when the Prime Minister returns from overseas on May 29.
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