Parliamentary Budget Deliberation Going Awry

As the National Assembly deliberates the government budget for the fiscal year 2003, it increased the amount of budget by 3.7% or 4.2159 trillion won, triggering criticism.

The government initially submitted the budget plan worth 111.685 trillion won to the Naitonal Assembly. But each parliamentary standing committee increased the amount of budget to 114.8739 trillion won and passed it over last week to the parliament`s Special Committee on Budget and Accounts.

The amount is double the average increase of 1.8% in the government plan, which occurred in the deliberation process of parliamentary committees for the past five years.

Moreover, it is reported that none of the 16 parliamentary standing committees reduced its budget, heralding unavoidable criticism for squandering taxpayers` money.

The background of the phenomenon is that the concept of the ruling and opposition parties have disappeared since President Kim Dae-jung gave up his membership of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) and that the Grand National Party (GNP) joins the pork-barreling with votes in mind instead of keeping in check the MDP`s lax budget deliberation as its standard bearer Lee Hoi-chang leads opinion polls.

The National Assembly plans to reopen the Special Committee for Budget and Accounts firm Oct. 28 to Nov. 8 for final examination of the budget plan. But as the National Assembly is expected to focus more on political concerns such as North Korea` nuclear issue than on the budget examination, no actual deliberation is expected.

By standing committee, the Committee for Operation increased the parliamentary budget for the next fiscal year by 6.6 billion won from the initial 246.7 billion won. The increased amount is for the establishment of a sauna for female lawmakers(510 million won), printing fees for parliamentary reports(5 million won per lawmaker), the total sum of which was initially removed by the Ministry of Planning and Budget.

Besides, the Committee for Construction and Transportation increased 989.8 billion won in its budget, and the Committee for Agriculture, Maritime and Fisheries and the Committee for National Defense 901.9 billion won and 534.4 billion won respectively.

A GNP official said that aside from the lack of commitment of the MDP to entrenchment, the GNP also finds no fault with the pork barreling since the next year`s budget will be under control of the party if it wins the presidential election.

An MDP official also said that keeping the 2004 general election in mind, most of lawmakers tried to secure more budgets for their constituencies at the budget deliberation, extending the size of the budget.

Rep. Lee Han-gu of the GNP said that such a practice has been around for years and it is expected to become clearer this time at the final stage of the budget deliberation.

Seung-Ryun Kim srkim@donga.com