Posturing of lawmakers hindering disaster relief

Opposition lawmakers charged that the Cabinet, in asking for additional funds for typhoon disaster relief, is only seeking cash to funnel to its DPP constituents.

The Cabinet has asked the legislature to loosen its grip over a NT$1.6 billion tax redistribution fund the premier says it needs for typhoon disaster relief.

In response, Lin Chuan (林全), head of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, said he would make public every detail of Cabinet expenditures to resolve lawmakers' suspicion that the money may become the Executive Yuan's "private stash."

PFP legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄) said he suspects the Cabinet is taking advantage of the opportunity to spend the tax redistribution fund so that it could give the money to DPP-controlled areas for local improvements, an excellent way to secure support from voters in the year-end elections.

Lawmakers are set to discuss the Cabinet's proposal today.

KMT lawmakers, who on Wednesday claimed that the Executive Yuan had at least NT$44.5 billion on hand to spend, said yesterday that they had discovered an additional NT$25.6 billion.

That figure would bring the total amount of funds the opposition says is available for disaster relief to NT$70 billion.

They demanded the Cabinet provide detailed plans for the spending of the requested NT$1.6 billion by today.

"The KMT will certainly cooperate if the Cabinet is able to present detailed spending plans," said KMT legislative caucus whip Lee Cheng-chong (李正宗).

"We wonder why the Cabinet pretends to be hard up for money instead of immediately sending help to the affected areas," Lee added.

According to KMT calculations, the newly discovered NT$25.6 billion consists of NT$11 billion from the "social relief" budget for fiscal 2000 and another NT$14.6 billion from public donations for post-earthquake reconstruction.

The original NT$44.5 billion figure cited by KMT lawmakers includes the NT$1.6 billion tax redistribution fund, NT$7.6 billion left over from past fiscal years, NT$9 billion in secondary reserves, and NT$26.3 billion originally budgeted for post-earthquake reconstruction but as yet unused.

Echoing the KMT's doubts, PFP lawmakers said the Cabinet should try to appropriate money from related budgets first.

"No matter how bad financial conditions are, it wouldn't be a problem to raise NT$10 billion to NT$20 billion [from these budgets]," PFP legislator Liu said.

DPP lawmakers, however, refuted the charges of politicking, saying that drawing on the tax redistribution fund is simply the fastest way to get help to the needy quickly.

Lin Feng-hsi (林豐喜), convener of the DPP legislative caucus, said most of the budgets mentioned by opposition lawmakers are designated for special purposes, which cannot be channeled to different programs arbitrarily.