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The third supplementary budget passed the Lower House on Jan. 26 despite howls of protest from the opposition that it sacrifices support for health care workers battling the pandemic in favor of propping up the economy.

The opposition parties argued for taking the 1.031 trillion yen ($9.94 billion) set aside for the controversial Go To Travel tourism campaign and using it to support health care professionals and medical institutions, dealing with the high number of COVID-19 cases.

The Go To Travel campaign, created to help the tourist industry weather economic hardship from the pandemic, was suspended in December following a spike in COVID-19 cases nationwide.

The opposition parties presented motions in the Lower House Budget Committee to delete provisions in the supplementary budget proposal that set aside funds for the tourism promotion campaign.

But the ruling coalition voted down the motions and approved the budget without change.

The opposition parties also asked for a continuation of the government outlays to businesses negatively affected by the novel coronavirus crisis to subsidize lost sales income and pay rents.

But Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said bars and restaurants were the main focus of the measures now in place so the only outlays would be the money paid to those establishments that are cooperating with requests from prefectural governors to shorten their business hours.

The third supplementary budget totals 19.176 trillion yen. Of that, 4.358 trillion yen has been allocated for pandemic measures such as support for medical institutions and setting up a vaccination program.

But more than double that--11.677 trillion yen--has been set aside for economic measures once the pandemic is brought under control.

Money has also been reserved for the Go To Eat program to support eateries and put into a foundation to support development of innovative technology to move toward a society of net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The opposition parties argued that such measures do nothing to address the crisis Japan now faces of surging COVID-19 cases.

The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party jointly entered a motion to delete about 6 trillion yen from the supplementary budget and use the funds to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to support for medical institutions, the opposition parties wanted more measures to help those facing economic difficulties due to the pandemic.

But the ruling coalition rejected those motions, including one that would have revived a program similar to the cash payments of 100,000 yen given to all residents of Japan last spring.

As Suga has long been an advocate of the Go To Travel campaign, it is not surprising that the administration refused to buckle under the opposition's sharp criticism.

Meanwhile, only about half of the money set aside in past supplementary budgets to pay for the campaign has been spent, according to the Japan Tourism Agency.

On top of that, with no indication of when the Go To Travel campaign will resume, some agency officials are raising doubts as to whether all the funds set aside from the first supplementary budget will be used by the end of the current fiscal year in March.

The Upper House deliberated the supplementary budget on Jan. 27 and is expected to approve it on Jan. 28.

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