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Emperor, as set forth in Chapter I. of the Constitution—to wit, ordinary expenditures required by the organization of the different branches of the Administration, and by that of the army and navy, the salaries of all civil and military officers, and expenditures that may be required in consequence of treaties concluded with foreign countries. Such expenditures, whether their origin be prior to the coming into force of the present Constitution or subsequent to it, shall be regarded as permanent expenditure already fixed at the time of the bringing of the Budget into the Diet. ‘Such expenditures as may have arisen by the effect of law’ include the expenses of the Houses of the Diet, annual allowances and other miscellaneous allowances to the members, pensions, annuities, expenses and salaries required by the organization of offices determined by law, and other expenses of a like nature. ‘Expenses that appertain to the legal obligations of the Government’ include the interest of the national debt, redemption of the same, subsidies or guarantees to companies, expenses necessary to the civil obligation of the Government, compensations of all kinds, and the like.

The Constitution and the law are the highest guides for the conduct of administrative and financial affairs, and the State, in order to accomplish the object of its existence, must accord the supremacy to the Constitution and the law, and subject administrative and financial affairs to the control of the two. Therefore, in taking the Budget into consideration, the Diet, faithful to the Constitution and the law, must make it the rule to provide the supplies that may be required by the national institutions established by the Constitution and by law. Also all existing contracts and all civil and all other obligations equally beget legal necessity for supplies. Were the Diet, in voting the Budget, to reject entirely or to reduce in amount any of the expenditures based by the Constitution upon the sovereign powers of the Emperor, or any expenditure necessitated by an effect of law for the fulfilment of legal obligations, such proceeding should be regarded as subversive of the existence of the State and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Constitution. From the wording ‘already fixed expenditures’ it is to be understood that, in regard to new expenditures or to the increase of existing ones, though based upon the sovereign powers of the Emperor, the Diet may have the power to freely deliberate upon them. Even those already fixed expenditures based by the Constitution upon the sovereign power of the Emperor, and those that have arisen either by effect of law or from the necessity of fulfilment of legal obligations, may with the consent of the Government be rejected or reduced in amount, or otherwise modified.

68. The expenditures of the State are ordinarily to be