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On August 18, DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada, who also serves as Chair of the DPJ Petitions Headquarters, submitted the party’s proposal regarding the budget requests for fiscal 2012 to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. The proposal summarized various budget-related petitions submitted to the DPJ by local governments and other organizations.
Okada explained that the proposal divided the approximately six thousand petitions that had been received by the party into the following four categories: (1) Recovery efforts and the creation of a stable and secure basis for people’s livelihoods following the Great East Japan Earthquake, (2) Promotion of economic, industrial and employment measures, beginning with measures to deal with the serious issue of the strong yen and falling share prices, (3) Further promotion of the healthcare, nursing care, child-rearing and education policies encapsulated by the slogan “Putting People’s Lives First”, and (4) Elimination of waste and reviews of spending. He called on the government to take these matters into account when considering the budget requests. In response, Edano said, “I will raise this matter in meetings of Cabinet members and ask them to take [the party proposal] into consideration.”
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