On December 1st, the day before the deadline for handling the next year’s budget bill amounting to 728 trillion won (set for December 2nd), the ruling and opposition parties are planning to meet again to seek consensus on contested budget items and proposals to increase corporate and education taxes.
Despite holding meetings among floor leaders and budget committee members in the National Assembly over the weekend (November 30th), the parties did not reach an agreement due to differences in opinion. Democratic Party’s Lee So-young and People Power Party’s Park Hyung-soo, who are the secretaries of the budget committee from both parties, joined the leadership meeting and then reconvened later in the day to work on minimizing disputes in the budget bill.
To ensure a “grand resolution” by the floor leaders of both parties, over 100 pending projects, such as policy funds and regional gift certificates, are being compressed to about 10 key issues. However, this process is taking time, which led to the postponement of the initially scheduled meeting between the floor leaders of the ruling and opposition parties.
Democratic Party Floor Leader Kim Byung-ki remarked that it’s impractical to have 100 issues on the table and emphasized the need to narrow it down to 6 or 7. People Power Party Floor Leader Song Eon-seok also indicated that their party’s secretaries in the budget committee needed more time for review.
Furthermore, the planned increase of 1 percentage point in corporate taxes and 0.5 percentage points in education taxes is expected to be revisited. While the government is proposing these increases, the People Power Party argues that raising corporate taxes across the board is akin to encouraging business closures, and an increase in education taxes could burden consumers by effectively raising insurance premiums.
If the main budget bill and accompanying legislative bills are not reviewed by November 30th annually, the government’s original proposal is automatically submitted to the main session on December 1st. This applies to the upcoming year’s budget and the related proposal for tax increases. However, if the ruling and opposition parties reach an agreement, they can introduce a revised version in the main session.
There is also a possibility of further discussions on the stalled “Daejang-dong Case appeal abandonment national investigation.” The People Power Party, after its earlier conditions for cooperation—such as selecting Na Kyung-won as the secretary of the National Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, agreeing on national investigation witnesses, and ensuring fair facilitation by Democratic Party’s Judiciary Committee Chair Chu Mi-ae—were rejected by the Democratic Party, aims to decide on its position based on internal party opinions and announce it early this week.