Parties to focus on job plans in budget deliberations

Lawmakers of the ruling and opposition parties are to clash over the ruling camp’s plan to create 12,000 new public sector jobs with an extra budget, as the parties aim to pass the bill on Tuesday.

The ruling and opposition lawmakers agreed that the National Assembly’s sub-committees will deliberate on the government’s 11.2 trillion won ($9.8 billion) budget plan until Monday. The motion will then be put to a floor vote during a plenary session on Tuesday.

The main sticking point is the 8 billion won allotted to hiring 4,500 new government employees within the second half of this year.

President Moon Jae-in and his governing Democratic Party assert that the plan focuses on filing chronic manpower shortages in public safety-related services, hiring firefighters and police officers, and that it is part of a bigger plan to spur job creations in the private sector. The plan was Moon’s major election pledge.

Opposition parties, however, vow to leave out the entire 8 billion won budget from deliberations, saying the recruitment plan would impose a far bigger burden on the taxpayers going forward, as the government will have to keep new hires on the payroll for decades to come.

“If only the new government hiring plan is scrapped, we expect the budget bill to pass within the July parliamentary session,” Rep. Lee Yong-ho, floor leader of the second-largest opposition People’s Party told reporters Sunday. 

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party’s policy chief Rep. Lee Hyun-jae also maintained the party’s stance that the extra budget lacks legal grounds in the first place.

The National Finance Act stipulates a supplementary budget can be drawn up only during war, natural disasters, economic recession, mass unemployment or crucial changes in cross-border relations and Moon’s budget meets none of the stated conditions, he insisted.

Bareun Party, a minor opposition with 20 lawmakers, also voiced its opposition to the 8 billion won recruitment plan.

“An extra budget drawn up for only half a year can create a fiscal burden that lasts for half a century,” said Rep. Lee Jong-chul, the party’s spokesperson.

Along with the budget proposal, Moon’s government reorganization bill is also expected to be rushed to the floor vote on Wednesday.

The Liberty Korea Party and Bareun Party oppose a plan to make the environment ministry the main body to handle water management. Currently, the land ministry is in charge of the national management of water as resources, while the environment ministry engages in only the environmental side of the water policy.

The parliament, meanwhile, is to hold confirmation hearings on Moon’s nominees for Cabinet ministers and other high-profile governmental posts.

Among them are Park Neung-hoo, a nominee for the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Paik Un-gyu, a nominee for the ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and Choi Jong-ku, who was nominated as the chairman of the Financial Services Commission.

By Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)