LDP, CDP Agree Budget Bill Upper House Votes Mon.

Tokyo, March 28 (Jiji Press)--Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Friday broadly agreed with the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan to put a revised government budget bill for fiscal 2025 to votes at the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors, the upper parliamentary chamber, and at a plenary session of the Upper House, both on Monday.

The revised bill reflects Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's decision to freeze a planned increase in the ceiling on out-of-pocket spending for high-cost medical care.

The government and the ruling parties hope to send the bill to the House of Representatives on the same day and obtain its approval at a plenary session of the lower chamber, making it highly likely that the budget will be enacted within fiscal 2024, which ends on Monday.

As a condition for agreeing to put the bill to the votes, the CDP had demanded that four former senior members of a now-defunct LDP faction once led by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe be summoned as witnesses over a slush funds scandal involving the faction. The LDP side accepted the summoning of one of the four--Lower House lawmaker Hiroshige Seko, who has left the LDP.

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