Escalating inter-party hostility threatens to kill the 11 trillion-won ($9.7 billion) extra budget bill, which is intended to ease the pain of corporate restructuring and stimulate the sluggish economy.

The ruling Saenuri Party, the main opposition The Minjoo Party of Korea and the minor opposition People’s Party at first agreed to pass the bill on Aug. 12. Then they delayed its passage to Aug. 22. As things stand now, they may not be able to act on it until the ongoing parliamentary session ends on Aug. 31.

The supplementary budget bill is being held hostage by the Minjoo Party, which has linked its passage to ruling party concessions on several related and unrelated issues.

The most important of them concerns the planned parliamentary hearings on how the government reached its decision to bail out the financially troubled Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co.

The opposition party insists that the three key officials who made the decision in October last year should appear in the hearings. They are An Chong-bum, senior presidential secretary for policy coordination; Choi Kyoung-hwan, a key ruling party lawmaker who was the finance minister at the time; and Hong Ky-ttack, then head of the Korea Development Bank.

Yet the ruling party is opposed to the presence of An and Choi at the hearings. It has hardened its stance following the opposition parties’ cross fire on Woo Byung-woo, senior presidential secretary for civil affairs who is alleged to have abused his power. Last week, he was referred to the prosecution for investigation by the special inspector, Lee Seok-soo.

President Park Geun-hye regards the relentless attacks on her secretary as an attempt to weaken her leadership. Hence the determined efforts by the Presidential Office and the ruling party to defend Woo.

Yet the resulting political gridlock is set to hit the sluggish economy. If the supplementary budget bill is scrapped, it would make the ongoing corporate restructuring more painful. With the extra budget, the government planned to create jobs and provide support to employees who have been made redundant.

No extra budget would further weaken the fragile economic recovery. With the 11 trillion-won increase in fiscal spending, the government sought to boost the nation’s growth rate by 0.3 percentage points and attain its revised target of 2.6 percent. Without an extra budget, this goal would be beyond its reach.

If the budget bill is not passed, the likelihood of the economy suffering a consumption cliff would increase. Consumption growth slowed visibly in the second half of the year as the consumption tax cuts expired in the first quarter.

Furthermore, a draconian anti-graft law goes into effect on Sept. 28, further weakening consumption and affecting the overall economy negatively.

Even without the law, Korean households have been spending less in the face of increasing economic uncertainty. The second-quarter household income data showed that the average household propensity to consume fell 0.7 percentage points from a year ago to hit the record low level of 70.9 percent.

The three political parties need to face the harsh reality. They should not forget that the nation can hardly afford to let inter-party hostility torpedo efforts to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

The government needs to press political parties to pass the bill during the ongoing parliamentary session. It also needs to come up with measures to increase the disposable income of low-income households whose marginal propensity to consume is high.