Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myeong said to Hong Nam-ki, Deputy Prime Minister of Economy and Ministry of Strategy and Finance, “It is not boasting to save surgery expenses during the war, but to certify that it is a low level of self-sufficiency.” It was criticized based on the analysis of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that Korea’s fiscal deficit was the lowest among advanced countries due to stingy about the payment of disaster support amid the global corona19 pandemic. Governor Lee said, “Recently, the OECD announced that Korea’s general fiscal deficit is the fourth smallest among 42 major countries.” .
The sniping of Lee’s Deputy Prime Minister Hong began in August when an opposition party lawmaker criticized Lee’s remarks in the National Assembly of “let’s pay for disaster support several times”, and then Deputy Prime Minister Hong struck a’battle ball’. At that time, Governor Lee set the day, “I will try to grow older because the respected Deputy Prime Minister Hong scolded me for being a’stupid talk’.” Afterwards, in the National Assembly in October, when Deputy Prime Minister Hong showed a negative stance regarding basic income, the Governor Lee attacked head-on, saying, “Is this country the country of equipment?”
Deputy Prime Minister Hong did not give an explanation or respond to the Governor’s offensive. However, there is a high possibility that the nerve wars of both sides will reignite over the 3rd disaster subsidies currently being discussed by the party government.
Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myung’s pressure on Deputy Prime Minister Hong seems to have nothing to do with the government funding of the Gyeonggi-do semi-public bus route expansion project. Governor Lee pushed forward a semi-public system that compensates for losses with government finances to prevent bus strikes as the bus industry deteriorated business management and manpower shortages arose due to the implementation of the 52-hour work week in May last year. However, when the Ministry of Information and Communications met opposition that the central government budget could not provide support for bus transportation companies under the jurisdiction of local governments, Governor Lee excluded Deputy Prime Minister Hong and discussed three-way discussions with Hyun-mi Kim, Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and Lee Hae-chan, former representative of the Democratic Party. At that time, the agreement to expand the semi-public service system was unilaterally announced through live TV broadcasting.
At the same time, this year, the Governor requested the Ministry of Information and Transportation to raise the share of government expenditures for semi-public projects from 30% to 50% from next year. However, the Ministry of Finance, which holds the budget, did not accept Gyeonggi Province’s request. “The budget for buses in Gyeonggi-do has been increased by nearly three times from 1.4 billion won to 4.1 billion won,” said Han Hoon, an economic budget examiner of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. “Therefore, we did not accept the increase of the government burden from 30% to 50%.
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