Former Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Tuesday criticized current leader Shinzo Abe's latest economic stimulus program as "pork."
"I cannot help feeling that it is pork-barrel spending," Noda, a supreme adviser of the Democratic Party of Japan, said in a speech in Washington, referring to Abe's roughly ¥5 trillion stimulus package designed to mitigate the impact of the consumption tax hike coming in April.
Noda, whose DPJ was knocked out of power by Abe's Liberal Democratic Party in December, also said he "strongly feels it is questionable" that the Abe administration is mulling ending the corporate tax surcharge for disaster reconstruction a year ahead of schedule.