Opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers on Friday again blocked the general budget for this year, saying that it was because the government failed to propose a budget consistent with the law.
According to the Budget Act (預算法), before the beginning of the new fiscal year, the Executive Yuan should submit its budget proposal to the legislature for deliberation four months in advance and the legislature should approve it one month in advance, allowing the president to announce it 15 days in advance.
The Executive Yuan in August last year submitted its general budget to the Legislative Yuan in compliance with the law, but KMT and TPP lawmakers, who control slightly more than half of the legislative seats, have refused to put it on the agenda and refer the different government agencies’ budget proposals to committees for detailed discussion and review.
After four months of refusal to put the budget on their deliberation agenda, the KMT and TPP caucuses said it is the government’s fault, not theirs, as the Cabinet did not compile a budget that allocates funds for military pay raises, and pension increases for retired police officers and firefighters based on bills they passed last year.
Late last month, the KMT said they would review the budget as soon as the government includes the two raises and halts further reductions to pensions for civil servants and teachers, but the Cabinet has declined to earmark funds for the raises and has sought a still-pending constitutional interpretation.
As the new year enters its second week, this year’s general budget remains unreviewed, and the Cabinet and legislature are still at an impasse.
The opposition parties ignored the fact that Article 70 of the Constitution stipulates that “the Legislative Yuan shall not make proposals for an increase in the expenditures in the budgetary bill presented by the Executive Yuan,” ignored the Legislative Yuan’s constitutional duty to review budgets, and disregarded the Budget Act, as they failed to approve the budget one month prior to the new fiscal year.
The Cabinet warned that failure to pass the general budget would cause NT$299.2 billion (US$9.5 billion) in funds for a wide range of services and development — including new initiatives, disaster response, defense, healthcare resilience and local government subsidies — to remain inaccessible.
Local governments voiced concerns that they might not be able to sustain TPass programs, which offers discounts or rebates for frequent riders, for long without the central government subsidy.
Most local government heads are KMT members, so their concerns about possible TPass disruption due to delayed budget review, which could freeze discounts for more than 1 million regular TPass users, has put pressure back on the KMT lawmakers.
The KMT caucus, realizing that their tactic of threatening the Executive Yuan might instead hurt their local governments, and potentially lead to losing support and votes in the local elections later this year, quickly said they would discuss with the TPP about referring parts of the general budget that affect people’s livelihoods, such as the TPass and birth subsidies, to legislative committees for review this week.
KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) called separating the controversial budgets and prioritizing passing the livelihood-related budgets “a feasible option that shows responsibility to the people and the state,” and said that the KMT supports building up national defense and reasonable military procurement, but is against paying for undelivered military equipment or unsuccessful domestic military equipment development.
However, how “responsible” they are is up to the public to decide, as KMT and TPP lawmakers neglect their duties of scrutinizing the government and reviewing budgets through “open deliberation” at committees, and at the same time sacrifice national security, development and public welfare only because they want to save face for their bruised egos — harmed by the fact that the Cabinet still doubts the constitutionality of the bills to raise pay and pension for certain groups of people that they passed, and decided not to include them in this year’s budget.
It is worth questioning how the KMT and TPP caucuses would decide which budgets are important and which group of people should receive priority — such as commuter discounts and childbirth subsidies over military modernization or artificial intelligence research. Are increased pensions for retired police officers, firefighters and civil servants more important than subsidies for long-term care services?
If the KMT and the TPP want to demonstrate their accountability, they should first properly perform their official duties — reviewing the budget on schedule, according to the law — rather than repeatedly blaming the government. If they have doubts about particular budgets, they can ask government officials to explain them, or even freeze or cut them during committee discussions, but refusing to even review them shows only laziness and irresponsibility.
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
As technological change sweeps across the world, the focus of education has undergone an inevitable shift toward artificial intelligence (AI) and digital learning. However, the HundrED Global Collection 2026 report has a message that Taiwanese society and education policymakers would do well to reflect on. In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in education is not advanced computing power, but people; and the most urgent global educational crisis is not technological backwardness, but teacher well-being and retention. Covering 52 countries, the report from HundrED, a Finnish nonprofit that reviews and compiles innovative solutions in education from around the world, highlights a
A recent piece of international news has drawn surprisingly little attention, yet it deserves far closer scrutiny. German industrial heavyweight Siemens Mobility has reportedly outmaneuvered long-entrenched Chinese competitors in Southeast Asian infrastructure to secure a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, Vingroup. The agreement positions Siemens to participate in the construction of a high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. German media were blunt in their assessment: This was not merely a commercial win, but has symbolic significance in “reshaping geopolitical influence.” At first glance, this might look like a routine outcome of corporate bidding. However, placed in
RSS