参院選2010： 消費税"アゲ"の議論が仇に ― tax hike

今週のテーマはほとんど参院選に関する話題ですが・・・。

今回の参院選では、とりわけ与党党首による消費税上げが焦点になりました。


TOKYO — Proposing a tax hike is normally a sure way to lose an election.
Yet Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan insists that's just what the country needs to do to rein in its bulging national debt.

In office just a month after his predecessor abruptly resigned, Kan has put repairing the country's strained finances at the center of the campaign for this Sunday's parliamentary elections.

The polls, in which half the seats in the 242-member upper house are up for grabs, is viewed as a referendum on the Democratic Party's 10 months in power since defeating the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party. The Democrats have promised to cut wasteful spending and bring greater transparency to politics, but have had a mixed record in achieving that so far.
(Malcolm Foster. Tax hike talk dominates Japan's weekend election. The Associated Press. July 7, 2010.)


"hike"という単語は以前も取り上げました。