“Strange and controversial bills” passed by opposition party lawmakers limit the Executive Yuan’s ability to plan and implement policies for the fair distribution of central government revenue to local governments, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday.
Cho made the remarks in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), a day after the Cabinet refused to countersign amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan last month.
President William Lai (賴清德) supported the decision. This marked the first time a president of the Republic of China has not publicly put into effect a bill passed by the Legislative Yuan.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
The amendments would give local governments a larger share of the central government’s revenue each year, which the Executive Yuan said “cannot be implemented,” as it would push central government debt next year beyond the statutory ceiling.
The Cabinet last month asked the legislature to revisit the amendments, but that request was denied by the opposition in 59-50 vote in the legislature on Friday last week.
Cho said in the interview that earlier yesterday he was briefed by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics on the review of the next fiscal year’s budget.
According to the report, approximately NT$100 billion (US$3.2 billion) in emerging projects would be unable to be executed, and an additional portion of ongoing projects cannot be used, with an estimated total of more than NT$100 billion, he said.
That includes NT$14.7 billion for river management in counties and cities, more than NT$10 billion for the new “AI [artificial intelligence] Ten Major Infrastructure Projects,” about NT$7.5 billion for the TPass system, NT$7 billion for vaccination programs, NT$4.2 billion for fertility subsidies, NT$700 million for school building renovation, and more, he said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) do not need to consider the government’s fiscal balance, he said, adding that they are not only boycotting the national budget, but are also aggressively pushing controversial bills.
Their goal is to prevent the government from performing when it has the opportunity and to obstruct decisionmaking at the critical moment, thereby hindering the country’s progress, he said.
Cho also revealed in the interview that after taking office last year, when facing “malicious legislations” pushed through by the opposition, which held a majority in the legislature, he had already planned to “not countersign” the bills.
However, considering that he had been in office for less than a year, he did not want to escalate tensions between the ruling and opposition parties, he said.
Cho said the Constitutional Court had been paralyzed by the KMT and the TPP for a long time, and the public had lost patience and confidence.
“At this moment, I felt compelled to defend democratic constitutionalism,” he said in explaining the Executive Yuan’s decision not to countersign the bill.
Following that decision, the Legislative Yuan might propose a motion of no confidence against the Executive Yuan, which would lead to a confrontation with the legislature, he said.
As Lai, in his capacity as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman, on Friday last week reached a consensus with DPP legislators to fully support the Executive Yuan, he felt he could make that decision, as he could not shift the issue onto the party caucus, Cho said.
He has established three criteria for bills that would not be countersigned: “destroying the country’s constitutional system, weakening national defense and security, and undermining national fiscal discipline,” he said.
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