Opposition parties yesterday used their numerical advantage to postpone placing the Executive Yuan’s draft of the fiscal planning act on Friday’s agenda, preventing it from receiving a first reading or being sent to a committee.
As the Procedure Committee was scheduling Friday’s and next Tuesday’s legislative schedules, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) proposed postponing inclusion of the Executive Yuan’s draft amendment to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法).
Although Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators opposed the move, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) sided with the TPP, using the combined numerical advantage of the two opposition parties in the committee to pass the motion by nine votes to seven.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The vote also blocked draft amendments regulating lawmakers’ travel to China for national security purposes.
TPP Legislator Liu Shu-pin (劉書彬), who proposed the blocking measure, said that not placing items on the agenda was effectively the same as sending them back to the Executive Yuan.
It would not be handled in this session, but could be proposed again next time, Liu said.
The TPP discussed the move with the KMT beforehand, she said, adding that there has been no follow-up discussion about when it might be placed on the agenda.
DPP Legislator Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) asked Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) if he would reconsider or refuse to sign amendments to the act proposed by opposition parties.
Cho said that he hopes that the version of the act from the National Audit Office would halt discussions about the wording of the legislation, making the Executive Yuan’s version the only viable option.
The Executive Yuan’s version has undergone more than six consultations with local governments, making it the most likely to achieve consensus and be brought before the Legislative Yuan for discussion, Cho said.
The version passed on Nov. 14 would increase government borrowing to NT$560 billion (US$17.81 billion), which exceeds the ceiling set by the Public Debt Act (公共債務法), he said.
The Executive Yuan cannot prepare a budget based on that version, as the budget would be illegal, he added.
Next year’s general budget has already been compiled based on the new version of the fiscal planning act and changes would undermine government administration, he said.
The Executive Yuan passed its version of the act on Thursday last week, with provisions that increased the central government’s allocation to local governments to more than NT$1.2 trillion, exceeding the NT$1.683 trillion approved by the opposition in December last year.
DPP caucus chief executive Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) said that the version of the act passed on Nov. 14 is NT$264.6 billion more than last year’s version, exceeding the government’s borrowing limit and making it difficult to implement.
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