Japan Lower House Passes Stopgap Budget

Tokyo, March 30 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet, or parliament, at a plenary meeting on Monday passed a stopgap state budget to cover expenditures for the first 11 days of fiscal 2026, which begins Wednesday. Meanwhile, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is set to give up on passing the government’s fiscal 2026 regular budget before the start of the new year. The regular budget was approved by the Lower House on March 13 and is now being debated at the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, where the LDP and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party lack a majority. The budget will automatically be enacted April 12 even without a vote at the Upper House, due to the Lower House’s constitutional supremacy. Yoshihiko Isozaki, the LDP’s Diet affairs chief in the Upper House, met with his counterpart Yoshitaka Saito of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan on Monday and informed him of the ruling party’s intention to give up on enacting the fiscal 2026 regular budget by the end of fiscal 2025 on Tuesday. Isozaki asked Saito for cooperation for the budget’s enactment by Friday. The CDP official rejected the request, demanding that an intensive deliberation be held with the participation by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, also president of the LDP. The stopgap budget, the first in 11 years, features 8,564.1 billion yen in general-account spending. It will likely be enacted later on Monday through an Upper House vote. At Monday’s meeting, Isozaki and Saito agreed that Upper House committees concerned will hold detailed deliberations on the fiscal 2026 regular budget on Wednesday and Thursday. Earlier on Monday, Takaichi, who had aimed to secure the full budget’s enactment within fiscal 2025, told a Lower House Budget Committee meeting that the government has decided to compile the stopgap budget in case the fiscal 2026 budget fails to be enacted by the end of this fiscal year. Of the expenditures under the stopgap budget, 2,756.5 billion yen will cover social security costs, such as public pension and welfare benefit payments. It also includes 47.7 billion yen and 14.9 billion yen for making high school education and elementary school lunches free, respectively. Revenue is estimated at 64.4 billion yen, including tax revenue, with the shortfall to be covered with the issuance of financing bills. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]