[Photo] House of Representatives plenary session 2012/05/11

On June 15, 2012, the DPJ, LDP and NEW KOMEITO agreed to amend the consumption tax hike and social security reform bills.
There are many people who oppose the consumption tax hike ; however, social security costs surpassed 100 trillion yen in 2011 and the amount of issued public bonds approaches 1,000 trillion yen.

In 2009 the ruling parties, the LDP and NEW KOMEITO decided on tax system reform including a consumption tax hike to curtail increasing social security costs.
However, the DPJ took control in the next election, becoming the ruling party and insisted they could secure 16.8 trillion yen by cutting budget waste, that a consumption tax hike was unnecessary.

Nevertheless, the third Prime Minister of the DPJ, Yoshihiko Noda submitted a bill to increase the consumption tax to the Diet in 2012.
It was only natural for the opposition parties to accuse the DPJ on the contradiction of policy and as a result, through a long Diet session, Noda admitted that the major DPJ policies presented in their manifest in 2009 could not be implemented.

I think the NEW KOMEITO is responsible for a fiscal adjustment and we can't disengage from the three party talks to amend the consumption tax bills.
If we don't participate, public opinion will criticize the NEW KOMEITO by saying they don't deserve to be a ruling party.

Therefore, it is better for us to reflect our policies to this amendment, such as changing the pension system, complex tax rates, and child support system.
It wouldn't be undesirable for the nation to allow the two biggest parties, the DPJ and LDP to decide the details of tax and social security reforms.

The NEW KOMEITO required five conditions to support this legislation, and the DPJ swallowed them all.
That is why the NEW KOMEITO agreed upon the bills.