Wise Budget Spending Stimulus Could Hurt Fiscal Health, Producing Little Results The largest-ever supplementary budget of 28.9 trillion won($20.7 billion), unveiled on Tuesday, appears somewhat inevitable to stave off recession. The "super-sized" extra budget is also in keeping with global trends toward greater fiscal stimulus to prop up sagging economies. Considering any governmental budget bill should seek to masimaize benificial effecs while minimazing adverse ones, however, the extra budget bill reveals more than just a few problems in both its revenue and spending aspects. First of all, only 17.7 trillion won will be new spending to save and create jobs as well as support low-income families and struggling small businesses, with the other 11.2 trillion won used to make up for revenue shortfall amid the economic slump. This is because the government made a erroneous - or overblown - growth projection for 2009 when it drew up this year's budget oly three months ago. The governmental budgeters should have apologized for this mistake first, instead of stressing the need for forming and approving the super budget, but they did not do so. Secondly, the Lee Myung-bak administration ought to try to fill up the revenue gap by cutting down on their nonessential spending, reducing, personnel expenses and refraining from building new facilities in Cheong Wa Dae, for instance. Instead, they are plugging the revenue hole by issuing treasury bonds and increasing governmental debts. Fiscal experts say a waste of budget erodes state coffers more deeply than embezzlement. Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun said the government expects the extra budget to boost gross domestic product by 1.5 percentage points and create 550,000 new jobs. The problem is, 400,000 of new openings are just temporary make-work jobs, such as picking up trash or weeding grasslands, with the remaining 150,000 being interns. The officials should rack their brains harder to provide more "sustainable" jobs, which can be directly turned into more productive workforce once the economy begins to recover. As a whole, far too large a portion of the extra spending has been allocated to public works programs, including projects related with rivers and canals. This, coupled with the yearly tax cuts of about 15 trillion won for holders and traders of real properties, would pose an additional fiscal burden of up to 90 trillion won over the next four years, which will be enough to provide free education at the nation's high school and even universities, according to estimates by civic groups. Minister Yun has not ruled out the possibility of another supplementary budget sometime soon, saying, "The door is alwaysopen." Even the present extra spending would increase governmental debts to 38.5 percent of the nation's GDP. Officials say this is just half the lvel of the OECD member countries' average. But considering the peculiar situation Korea is in, including a rapidly aging society, eventual reunification costs and an insufficient social safety net, it could seriously threaten fiscal health. There is an easy way for a "win-win" budget that sharply boosts the effect of additional spending while not hurting fiscal soundness too much: shelving the dificit financed tax cuts for wealthy property holders. But Minister Yun, emphasizingthe need for consistency in governmental policy, made clear he would push ahead with tax cuts. Yet it is also the duty of the government's policymakers to rectify the course once it is found to be wrong. If the government refuses to do so, the National Assembly should drive it in the right direction. Which is why the Assembly ought to examine the extra budget bill with unusual attention.