The Cabinet is considering asking the legislature to hold a revote on the central government general budget plan, and could freeze half of subsidies to local governments as it reworks funding plans, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday.
At a news conference in Taipei, his third on the matter since the legislature began voting on budget downsizing proposals on Friday last week, Cho said the Cabinet would seek “remedies” to overturn the NT$2.92 trillion (US$89.1 billion) budget plan passed by the legislature on Tuesday.
The revised plan includes NT$207.6 billion of cuts to the Cabinet’s original budget proposal, an approximately 6.6 percent reduction, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS).
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Asked about what such remedies would entail, the premier said requesting the legislature hold a revote on a bill deemed difficult to implement is “the right and obligation of the Executive Yuan under Article 3 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution [憲法增修條文].”
Calling the spending cuts and freezes “suicidal,” Cho said they would “paralyze government operations” and cause “immeasurable damage” to the nation.
To protect the Executive Yuan, Cho said he has asked Executive Yuan Secretary-General Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) and Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) to collate all the subsidized projects and budgets that were approved last year and review them after the Lunar New Year.
As long as it does not involve social welfare policies that affect underprivileged groups, 50 percent of the subsidies to local governments would be frozen, he said.
The economy grew by 4.27 percent last year, so the government should enable people to live a better life, boost industrial development and strengthen the nation’s sovereignty, Cho said.
The opposition’s austerity measures include cutting NT$100 billion in aid for state-owned Taiwan Power Co (台電), which has sustained huge losses due to rising global oil prices and the government’s hesitance to raise utility prices.
The DGBAS said that the legislature has also frozen an estimated NT$160.7 billion in funding for various government agencies, including nearly NT$90 billion for the Ministry of National Defense and about NT$16 billion for the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
Those ministries would not be able to access the frozen funds until they complete specific tasks requested by lawmakers and brief them about the outcomes.
The DGBAS data showed that both the budget cuts and freezes, driven mainly by lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), were exceptionally high compared with the past decade.
However, as of yesterday, the legislature had not submitted the approved budget plan to the Executive Yuan, meaning the latter would likely have to wait until after the Lunar New Year holiday to take its next steps.
The Cabinet would, with the approval of the president, request a reconsideration by lawmakers within 10 days of receiving the legislature’s notification if it finds “a statutory, budgetary or treaty bill passed by the Legislative Yuan difficult to execute.”
Cho also apologized to contract government employees, who would not be able to receive raises this year due to the cuts.
More than 110,000 people working for central and local governments would be affected, Cho said, citing Examination Yuan data.
The KMT yesterday published a series of social media posts accusing the Democratic Progressive Party of spreading rumors and overseeing wasteful spending.
“As hard-earned taxpayers’ money has fallen into the pockets of fat cats, the opposition party naturally cannot just sit back and watch, and it must strictly monitor the situation,” it wrote.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua
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