Interpellations by Party Representatives at Diet: Are Tax Cuts, Free Education The Only Points of Discussion?

Editorial

15:54 JST, January 29, 2025

Is it right to devote all the deliberation time to discussions on tax cuts and free education? The government and political parties should squarely debate what direction the nation should take and other important issues.

Interpellations by representatives of each party are being held at plenary sessions of both houses of the Diet in response to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s recent policy speech.

Seiji Maehara, co-representative of the Japan Innovation Party, called for the realization of free high school education without income restrictions, including for private schools, to reduce the burden on households raising children. Yoshihiko Noda, president of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, similarly called for free high school education.

The prime minister said only, “We’d like to continue discussions while considering how to secure stable financial resources.”

Free high school education is a signature policy of the JIP. The party has indicated that it will agree to the initial budget proposal for next fiscal year on the condition that free high school education be made available nationwide without imposing income restrictions, as is the case in Osaka Prefecture, which is the party’s electoral base.

In Osaka Prefecture, however, while private high schools are gaining in popularity because they charge lower tuition thanks to subsidies, there has been a negative effect of fewer student attending some public high schools than their enrollment capacity.

Firstly, high school tuition fees have already been reduced to a considerable extent. Therefore, if free high school tuition were to be implemented nationwide, the benefits would be limited only to high-income earners, as there are few private high schools in rural areas and most public high schools already do not charge tuition.

According to the JIP’s proposal, ¥600 billion a year would be needed to finance the program. Is it reasonable to invest such a large amount of money?

Basically, if education is to be discussed, it should be the role of the Diet to consider the proper nature of education, from the viewpoint of how to increase children’s motivation to learn and how to nurture human resources with a rich sense of humanity.

Hideko Nishioka, a House of Representatives lawmaker from the Democratic Party for the People, called for a further heightening of the threshold for the imposition of income tax. It was decided by the ruling parties at the end of last year to raise the threshold from ¥1.03 million to ¥1.23 million.

Each opposition party’s stance of trying to force the ruling minority to accept a spate of policies that are apparently lavish budgetary handouts, while shelving the issue of financial resources to pay for them, is extremely irresponsible. It is obvious that the opposition parties intend to use this as material to appeal to the public in a House of Councillors election this summer.

The government and ruling parties are also being weak. If they placate the opposition parties, make repeated concessions to them and thereby worsen the fiscal situation, it will only be detrimental to the national interest.

Noda called for an early Japan-U.S. summit, to which Ishiba responded, “I want to build a cooperative relationship.”

Ishiba is making arrangements to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump next month. Amid the chaos of the international situation, it is necessary to thoroughly explain to Trump how important the Japan-U.S. alliance is and build a relationship of trust.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Jan. 29, 2025)