The Legislative Yuan backed away from its previous hardline stance and agreed yesterday to relax Cabinet spending restrictions on the nation's special tax redistribution fund, permitting NT$1.6 billion left in the fund to be used for disaster relief.
According to the decision, the Cabinet will no longer be required to obtain the legislature's approval before drawing on the fund.
The money must be spent specifically on disaster relief or be used for part of its original purpose of subsidizing old-age stipend programs.
The fund had amassed NT$4.6 billion as of June, with an estimated NT$4.7 billion expected for the second half of the fiscal year.
With the legislature's permission, the Cabinet drew NT$3 billion from the fund in July, also for the purposes of typhoon disaster relief. This leaves the NT$1.6 billion now under consideration.
"The legislature is very concerned about the large number of disasters that have recently taken place and will take action to cooperate with the executive branch to facilitate relief and reconstruction efforts," said Legislative Yuan speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Wang promised legislative help in case a supplementary budget needed to be passed.
Wang, however, said the Executive Yuan should first try its best to locate all the money that is currently available in the existing budget before thinking about proposing a supplementary budget.
Under close scrutiny by the legislature, the Cabinet has been required to obtain legislative approval before drawing on local government-related budgets that they suspect would become the Cabinet's "private stash" to support DPP-ruled localities.
The special tax redistribution fund is comprised of money withheld by the Cabinet to cope with fiscal emergencies at the local government level. The money involved constitutes 6 percent of the total amount of the tax redistribution fund that is to be allocated to local governments, according to fixed percentages.
Immediately after Typhoon Toraji's onslaught in Hualien and Nantou Counties earlier this week, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) asked the legislature to approve the Cabinet's plan to use the special fund for disaster relief.
Though agreeing to hold negotiations on the matter, opposition lawmakers were unhappy with what they considered a DPP attempt to portray the legislature as the main reason for the government's financial difficulties.
They claimed that the Cabinet had between NT$40 billion and NT$70 billion on hand to be spent, none of which would require legislative approval.
At yesterday's meeting, opposition lawmakers again called the DPP's attention to the matter.
In particular, opposition law-makers say, there is NT$7.6 billion in tax funds from past fiscal years, NT$2.3 billion in donations for post-earthquake reconstruction that remain unused, NT$4.7 billion in the disaster relief-related budget under various ministries and NT$27.3 billion of the post-earthquake reconstruction budget that has not yet been allocated to specific projects.
However, Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯), chief executive of the DPP legislative caucus, said the opposition's allegation was ungrounded.
"The requirement [to obtain the legislature's approval before spend-ing the special tax redistribution fund] has limited the flexibility of the Cabinet in spending the money, and we think such restrictions should be lifted," Tsai said.
While the NT$7.6 billion is intended to resolve the financial shortfall of local governments, the post-earthquake reconstruction budget is already designated for a special purpose and cannot be channeled to different uses, Tsai said.
The disaster relief-related budget alone is insufficient to cope with demand because the losses caused by the typhoon and the funds needed for reconstruction projects are expected to total tens of billions of New Taiwan dollars, Tsai added.
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