The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) today once again used their majority to block the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.49 billion) special defense budget and central government budget from proceeding through the legislative process.
During a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Procedure Committee today, opposition lawmakers voted not to place either budget on the agenda for Friday’s Legislative Yuan plenary session, preventing them from being sent to the relevant committees for review.
The Executive Yuan on Nov. 27 last year approved a NT$1.25 trillion special defense budget to strengthen Taiwan’s defense and asymmetric warfare capabilities and subsequently submitted it to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation.
Photo: Liu Hsin-te, Taipei Times
The KMT and TPP first blocked the budget at the Procedure Committee on Dec. 2 last year and have since done so repeatedly, demanding that military pay raises be incorporated into the central government budget.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) today proposed adding the budgets to the plenary session’s agenda, saying that it is the first time the central government budget has not even been sent to committee for review by Jan. 13.
The committee rejected Fan’s proposal to add the budgets to the agenda, with 10 votes against and eight votes in favor.
Today marks the eighth time the special defense budget has been blocked, Fan said, calling on the KMT and TPP to remember that “time is an irreversible resource for Taiwan” and to stop blocking the budgets.
When the Executive Yuan fails to fulfill its responsibilities, the duty to move the nation forward falls to the opposition, KMT caucus secretary-general Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said.
The KMT and TPP hope that the Legislative Yuan on Friday will consider funding for new projects and urgent livelihood-related budgets, Lo said.
Lo’s claim that new projects need to be resubmitted is unusual because the entire central government budget was already sent to the Legislative Yuan in August last year, and new projects never had to be submitted separately, DPP Legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) said.
The entire government budget has been sitting with the legislature since August, and now the special defense budget is not even being reviewed, Shen added.
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