Four LDP lawmakers who abstained in the Lower House vote on the consumption tax cut and support payment bill answered the party leadership's written request for an explanation on the 9th, saying no alternative source of revenue could be found, a party executive said.
The four left the chamber just before the vote on the 6th: former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, former economy, trade and industry minister Yuko Obuchi, former Economic Planning Agency chief Hajime Funada, and Yoshihisa Furukawa, deputy head of the party's tax research commission.
Party leaders treated the walkout as serious. On the 6th, Secretary-General Shunichi Suzuki sent the four a document in his name saying the conduct "cannot be overlooked from the standpoint of party discipline and party unity." It demanded a reply by noon on the 9th.
Ishiba told reporters on the 9th that the consumption tax pays for social security. "It is a very serious problem for the whole public that that funding disappears while no alternative source can be found," he said.
In the document, Ishiba wrote that the prime minister has said in the Diet there is no need to worry about an alternative revenue source. He added: "But what exactly that is has still not become clear, and that is what I wrote."
Furukawa gave his reason for leaving in the document. "It is the responsibility of politics to deliver support quickly to people tightening their belts under high prices and to reliably ease the household burden," he wrote. "But I could not judge that this bill fulfills that responsibility sufficiently."
He argued a consumption tax cut would not deliver enough support and that cash benefits should be used instead. He also wrote that "concrete backing for securing revenue has not been shown in a form that allows a judgment for or against." The specifics of the system had not been presented either, he wrote, so the public could not be adequately informed.