The government has submitted its proposal for a supplementary budget to the National Assembly, hoping for an early passage so that it can inject fresh vigor into the economy.

Given the sorry state of the economy, a supplementary budget should have been created much earlier. But the new administration had been held back by a long standoff between rival parties over government reorganization.

Now, lawmakers need to rush to handle the bill to give the economy a much-needed boost without further delay. At the same time, they need to act promptly on the government’s real estate package announced on April 1. The two stimulus measures need to go hand in hand to maximize synergy.

The government’s extra budget proposal, unveiled on Tuesday, calls for increasing this year’s budget by 17.3 trillion won, about 5 percent of the original budget of 342 trillion won. While the figure is by no means small, questions are raised whether it will be enough to stimulate the economy.

It is because as much as 12 trillion won of the extra budget will be used to fill the expected revenue shortfalls, limiting the net increase in government spending to 5.3 trillion won, less than one-third of the proposed budget.

The government’s estimate of revenue shortfalls includes a 6 trillion won drop in tax income due to the slowing economy and another 6 trillion won deficit stemming from its decision to scrap plans to privatize state-run banks.

As 5.3 trillion won would not be enough to prime the pump, the government plans to boost firepower by having state-run funds increase their spending by 2 trillion won, which is not subject to parliamentary approval. It has also told public corporations to increase investment by 1 trillion won.

Budget planners expect that all these measures will combine to boost economic growth by 0.3 percentage point this year and 0.4 percentage point next year. They are also expected to create about 40,000 new jobs additionally on top of the 250,000 targeted for this year.

In March, the government lowered its growth outlook to 2.3 percent from 3 percent forecast in December. So if the stimulus measures work as planned, the economy would grow 2.6 percent. This is still way below Korea’s potential growth rate of around 4 percent.

And 290,000 new jobs are much smaller than those created last year and hardly enough to raise the nation’s employment ratio to 70 percent, the target pursued by the new government.

Against this backdrop, leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party are moving to alter the government’s proposal. The DUP finds it unacceptable, not least because it only allocates 400 billion won to job creation.

They are likely to ratchet up state spending either by increasing the size of the extra budget or by reducing the portion set aside to offset revenue shortfalls. They may do both.

A bigger extra budget would inject a bigger stimulus into the economy, accelerating the sluggish recovery. But it needs to be remembered that a large-scale extra budget would result in increased fiscal deficits and could affect the nation’s credit rating negatively.

Furthermore, government spending is not as effective as private investment in reinvigorating the economy. President Park Geun-hye is well aware of this. Earlier this week, she said an extra budget “can have only a limited effect on the economy if companies do not increase investment.”

Noting that listed companies’ holdings of cash or cashable assets exceeded 52 trillion won, Park said that if they only invested 10 percent of these assets, the nation would have fresh corporate investments as large as the government spending increase proposed by the extra budget plan.

So government officials need to leave no stones unturned to encourage corporations, large or small, domestic and foreign, to increase investment.

For their part, lawmakers need to speed up their deliberation of the budget bill as the economy urgently needs a shot in the arm. The faster they act, the greater the extra budget’s effect will be.

On Tuesday, they managed to sort out their differences on some of the details of the real estate package, brightening the prospects of its early implementation. They need to exercise bipartisan cooperation on handling the remaining issues. This is one way they can pull their weight in putting the economy back on track.