The Democratic Party of Japan, which will soon take the helm of government, has started trying to implement its election promises. It has decided to suspend disbursement of ¥3 trillion in allocations from the ¥14 trillion fiscal 2009 supplementary budget and to revive the once-abolished ¥18 billion in payments to mother-and-child households on welfare, in an extraordinary session of the Diet this autumn.

A complete reworking of the supplementary budget will be carried out in a Diet session to be convened in January 2010.

As for the fiscal 2010 budget, the DPJ has decided to review budgetary requests from government ministries and agencies from scratch. This will be the first step of the DPJ's plan to rework the nation's ¥207 trillion annual budget to free up money necessary to carry out election promises.

The Aso administration had set a ¥52.67 trillion ceiling on fiscal 2010 policy-related expenditures. In accordance with the imposed ceiling, the ministries and agencies submitted their budgetary requests to the Finance Ministry by the end of August.

Departing from the traditional budget drafting process, the DPJ plans to thoroughly examine expenditures to detect waste. Outlays for organizations in which former bureaucrats landed jobs will be among the targets. The party wants to make about ¥7 trillion available for measures such as paying a child allowance and ending the surcharge on road-related taxes.

What the DPJ plans to do is easier said than done. The traditional budget drafting system is so complicated that it is difficult for outsiders to determine which projects are really necessary. It will be challenging work for the DPJ, which has no experience in governing. Reviewing and reworking the budget draft are expected to take a while. The DPJ also wants to free up money by eliminating waste in central government subsidies to local governments. Resistance from bureaucrats is very likely.

A delay in budget compilation could negatively affect Japan's economic recovery. If necessary, the DPJ should concentrate on executing only a few of its select policy measures in the first year of its ruling.