Legislators are today and tomorrow to continue deliberating over about 800 budget-related proposals as they aim to finish a review of the central government’s budget before the legislative session ends tomorrow.
Ruling and opposition parties continued to debate the central government’s proposed 2025 budget with total expenditures of more than NT$3.13 trillion (US$95.1 billion).
On Friday, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to cut NT$93.98 billion from the central government’s general budget.
The KMT has proposed cutting a total of NT$111 billion, or 3.47 percent, from the budget.
Under the recently amended Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), the central government must allocate NT$375.3 billion annually to local governments, affecting 28 percent of the budget, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics has said.
If national defense expenditures are not reduced, it would affect 37 percent of the budget, it added.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) yesterday said that in the 16 years of the administrations of former presidents Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the legislature on average cut the central budget by just 1.19 percent, about one-third of the opposition parties’ proposed 3.47 percent cut, the largest to the budget in history.
The opposition has been obstructing the central government from fulfilling its policy commitments and encroaching on the Executive Yuan’s budgetary authority, she said.
“Budget oversight should be rational,” but the opposition’s proposals “are driven by a desire to make governance difficult for the administration,” Wu said.
KMT Secretary-General Justin Huang (黃健庭) said that even with the 3.47 percent budget cut, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration would still have a budget of NT$2.8 trillion to NT$2.9 trillion.
“This administration is incompetent,” he said, adding that previous administrations operated fine with a budget of about NT$2 trillion.
The central government under the DPP has wasted a significant amount of money and if the legislature did not conduct a thorough review, “we would be failing in our duties,” he said.
TPP Acting Chairman and caucus whip Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) on Thursday last week said that his caucus proposed cutting NT$200 billion and freezing NT$100 billion of the budget, accounting for about 10 percent of its total.
The opposition parties are fulfilling their duty by conducting a thorough review of a record-high budget, he said.
Huang Kuo-chang said that pro-DPP media and DPP legislators were spreading disinformation by claiming that legislators from opposition parties want to paralyze the government.
In 2012, Tsai, then-DPP chairperson, wrote on Facebook that government agencies’ budgets should be cut by 20 percent, he said.
“As a former minister, I know the government and ministries could still function with a 10 percent budget cut,” he said Tsai had written.
It is contradictory that Tsai could make such a statement and yet the TPP is being accused of paralyzing the government for its proposed budget cuts, he said.
Yangmingshan National Park authorities yesterday urged visitors to respect public spaces and obey the law after a couple was caught on a camera livestream having sex at the park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) earlier in the day. The Shilin Police Precinct in Taipei said it has identified a suspect and his vehicle registration number, and would summon him for questioning. The case would be handled in accordance with public indecency charges, it added. The couple entered the park at about 11pm on Thursday and began fooling around by 1am yesterday, the police said, adding that the two were unaware of the park’s all-day live
A former soldier and an active-duty army officer were yesterday indicted for allegedly selling classified military training materials to a Chinese intelligence operative for a total of NT$79,440. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office indicted Chen Tai-yin (陳泰尹) and Lee Chun-ta (李俊達) for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法) and the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例). Chen left the military in September 2013 after serving alongside then-staff sergeant Lee, now an army lieutenant, at the 21st Artillery Command of the army’s Sixth Corps from 2011 to 2013, according to the indictment. Chen met a Chinese intelligence operative identified as “Wang” (王) through a friend in November
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
The Grand Hotel Taipei has rejected media reports claiming that the hotel had prevented CBS from broadcasting coverage of the Beijing summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on its premises. Media reports alleging that the hotel owner, dissatisfied with CBS’s coverage, prohibited the network from broadcasting political content on the hotel premises, are not true, the hotel said in a statement issued last night. The reports were “inconsistent with how the hotel actually handled the matter,” it said. The hotel said it received a refund request from a
RSS