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Plan to cut Budget Center funding dropped

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus yesterday withdrew a proposal to cut the budget of the legislature's Budget Center, saying that the move would serve as a warning over the center's "unprofessional" work.

"We were simply delivering a message that `the center should stay neutral' and we have withdrawn the proposal now because I think our voice has been heard," DPP caucus whip Wang Tuoh (王拓) said.

The DPP proposed the budget cuts during a legislative meeting last week. The proposal was to cut half of the next year's annual budget for the center, which serves as an advisory organization to legislators.

Wang said that the caucus made the proposal because the center had been acting very unprofessionally and its employees seemed to favor the pan-blue camp while carring out their jobs.

"For instance, the center's evaluation report should act as a reference just for lawmakers. Yet center staffers leaked information to the press," he said.

He said the center was trying to increase the special allowances for the legislative speaker and vice speaker, but had proposed a 20 percent cut in the special allowances of the heads of the Control Yuan, Examination Yuan and Judicial Yuan.

"It is very difficult to persuade us that these moves have nothing to do with political orientation, since all these people are pan-green except the legislative speaker and vice speaker," Wang said.

DPP Legislator Hsien Hsin-ni (謝欣霓) also questioned the center's performance.

"For example, when coming up with a new budget plan you have to consider the amount the government has actually spent. But they [the center] simply compared last year's budget and this year's budget without going into any detail," Hsieh said.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus slammed the DPP's proposal.

Caucus whip Kuo Su-chun (郭素春) said the DPP caucus just wanted to cut the center's budget because some of the center's reports had criticized the government's administrative achievements.

"When the DPP was in opposition, the DPP caucus usually criticized the ruling party [KMT] by citing the center's reports, but when the DPP became the ruling party, its caucus suddenly opposed such a move," Kuo said.

Kuo's comment followed a report in the Chinese-language China Times yesterday, which said the DPP caucus had submitted the proposal because it was unhappy with some of the center's reports which might have put the government's achievements in a negative light.

KMT Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) said the DPP caucus had "forgotten the legislature's duty to supervise the government."

"No legislature in the world has ever proposed cutting the budget of its own research and budget planning organizations," Lee said.

"We have sought to halve the number of legislative seats, but this does not mean that we can reduce the function of the legislature," KMT Legislator Joanna Lei (雷倩) said.

The center should instead be given more resources, Lei said.
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