People Power Party lawmakers on the Special Committee on Budget & Accounts said on the 24th that the Lee Jae-myung administration's budget proposal for next year is a strategyless, planless, thoughtless "fake AI" budget that has massively increased allocations for a "cosmetic AI" budget without properly building the foundation.
People Power Party members of the budget committee held a press conference at the National Assembly briefing room that morning and stated accordingly that they demand converting the "cosmetic AI" budget, whose size was increased from 330 billion won to 1.01 trillion won, into a "real AI" budget.
The People Power Party assessed the Lee Jae-myung administration's budget proposal for next year as a "voucher-and-fund panacea budget" and a "fake AI budget." In particular, it argued for cuts, saying that proper consultations with the opposition were not held for items including ▲ 1.2 trillion won for regional vouchers ▲ 3 trillion won for fund-related budgets ▲ 8.2 billion won for the presidential office's special operation expenses ▲ 4.2 trillion won in contingency funds ▲ 1,900 trillion won for responding to investment in the United States.
Park Hyeong-su, a People Power Party lawmaker who serves as the opposition secretary on the budget committee, said, "The Democratic Party of Korea is simply opposing the cuts while ignoring the reasonable bases and arguments for reductions presented by the People Power Party," and added, "The Democratic Party is focused on increasing so-called reward budgets for presidential election supporters, such as reflecting increases during the preliminary review at the standing committee for a 5.5 billion won lease deposit for the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) office and 7.5 billion won for the TBS Traffic Broadcasting budget."
Choi Hyeong-du of the same party said, "The AI budget submitted by the government now is just old projects with new labels, and it involves several trillion won," and added, "The budget should be structured to grow 'real AI' that contributes to computing infrastructure like purchasing GPUs (graphics processing units) and to training AI talent."
The People Power Party is demanding increases in a total of nine areas while cutting government spending. Specifically, it is requesting increases for ▲ special loans for home purchases ▲ subsidy support for building city gas supply pipelines ▲ support for education, seniors, and farmers and fishers ▲ support for veterans of participation and veterans groups ▲ AI-based career planning ▲ support for medically underserved areas ▲ expansion of regional AI infrastructure ▲ region-tailored projects.
After the press conference, meeting with reporters, Park said, "When the scale of cuts has not been finalized, deliberating on increases is meaningless and inefficient," and added, "Matters put on hold during cut discussions will be finalized through a small subcommittee starting on the 25th."