A cross-caucus negotiation at the Legislative Yuan on Wednesday last week reached a consensus that the legislature would invite Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) to report on this year’s general budget and refer it to committees for review tomorrow.
If tomorrow’s meeting proceeds smoothly, it could end the prolonged political gridlock between the Cabinet and the Legislative Yuan over the general budget, which has delayed the review for an unprecedented 230 days.
While the Executive Yuan, on the same day, thanked Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) for mediating the cross-caucus negotiation and the ruling and opposition caucuses for prioritizing public welfare and national development, a consensus was not reached because of a sudden change of heart by the opposition-controlled legislature, but due to agreed concessions.
The Cabinet agreed to promptly implement a NT$71.8 billion (US$2.27 billion) portion — about 2.1 percent — of the NT$3.3 trillion budget that was selected by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in January for funding 38 new initiatives, which the legislature agreed to pass in upcoming reviews.
The Cabinet also agreed that it would submit bills within six months of starting the review to raise pay for active-duty military personnel and increase the income replacement ratio for retired police officers and firefighters, while the TPP caucus agreed to withdraw an earlier motion for budget reconsideration.
Since the Cabinet proposed the general budget for review in late August last year, opposition lawmakers had boycotted the review procedure, arguing that legislation passed earlier last year to raise pay for military personnel and increase pensions for retired police officers and firefighters was not reflected in the general budget, using this as justification to reject the proposal as “unconstitutional.”
The Cabinet refused to earmark the funding, arguing that doing so would be unconstitutional, as 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,” and requested a constitutional interpretation and an injunction.
As the budget review remained stalled into the new fiscal year, local governments began expressing concerns about financial pressure as some public service policies were only partially funded by the central government. In response, opposition lawmakers in January selected 38 items, including childbirth subsidies, TPass public transportation and flood management projects, and passed a resolution allowing the Cabinet to allocate these funds — about NT$71.8 billion — first, an unprecedented step in legislative history.
Amid the prolonged stalemate, last week’s cross-caucus compromise allowing the budget to proceed to review appears to be a breakthrough, but it does not guarantee a smooth process ahead for the Cabinet or a full return to normal legislative functioning. Questions remain about whether the legislature has functioned adequately since lawmakers took office two years ago.
Under responsible governance — centered on accountability, transparency, the rule of law, ethical conduct and sound financial management — the Cabinet is responsible for preparing and proposing the budget, which must then be scrutinized through cuts or freezes and approved by the legislature.
The intent behind Article 70 of the Constitution is that a fiscally sound budget requires unified planning by the executive branch, to avoid excessive or localized spending driven by lawmakers incentivized to satisfy voters and secure district funding rather than national interests, which could lead to imbalances or deficits.
However, opposition lawmakers in 2024 had already forced the Cabinet to compromise by stalling review of the previous year’s budget until it agreed to earmark funding for increased compensation related to logging bans on indigenous lands, following earlier legislative action.
The opposition found this method effective in compelling the Cabinet to implement its decisions without assuming executive office, and continued similar tactics last year, intensifying the legislative-executive deadlock and expanding legislative overreach.
Meanwhile, the legislature continues to stall review of a special national defense budget (although another cross-caucus negotiation is scheduled this week) and keeps rejecting nominees for Constitutional Court justices, Central Election Commission members and Examination Yuan officials, with consequences for national security and disruptions to normal government operations and public services.
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
RSS