Parliament passes 284.5 tln won budget for 2009

(ATTN: ADDS more details in paras 2, 8)
SEOUL, Dec. 13 (Yonhap) -- The National Assembly passed on Saturday morning a
284.5 trillion won (US$206.8 billion) budget bill for 2009 despite strong
resistance from the main opposition party.

The 2009 consolidated budget, which includes the government's general and special
accounts and public funds, represents a 11.05 percent gain from this year's
budget of 256.17 trillion won.
Legislators from the ruling Grand National Party (GNP) and two minority parties
voted for the bill, while lawmakers from the main opposition Democratic Party
(DP) boycotted the vote in a show of defiance.
The bill's passage marks the first time since 2005 that parliament has approved
the budget with the main opposition party lawmakers absent.
Parliament missed the official Dec. 2 deadline for the budget as it failed to
bridge a widening partisan divide.
The GNP pushed for tax cuts and increased spending to bolster the economy, while
the DP demanded changes to the scope of both those initiatives in light of bleak
growth projections.
On Monday, the two parties agreed to settle the budget bill by Friday amid fierce
objections from the Democratic Labor Party, a progressive minority party.
Rival parties failed to agree, however, on a budget increase of 4.3 trillion won
to create jobs and a social safety net, which was demanded by the DP in talks
that lasted until early Saturday morning.
The government plans to frontload its scheduled 2009 budget spending in the first
half of next year to cushion the impact of a deepening economic downturn, said an
official at the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, who asked not to be identified.
ksnam@yna.co.kr
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