There is still no end in sight for a standoff at the legislature over the Cabinet-proposed central government budget plan for the next fiscal year, after inter-party negotiations on Thursday again failed to produce an agreement and the opposition yesterday voted down a motion to place the budget bills on the agenda.
Despite the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) making concessions during the 90-minute negotiations on Thursday, it was not enough to satiate lawmakers from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP).
In a bid to break the deadlock, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) scheduled another inter-party meeting for Monday.
Photo: CNA
The NT$3.33 trillion (US$103.79 billion) proposal presented by the Cabinet has yet to pass its first reading, a necessary step for it to be sent to legislative committees for deliberation.
KMT and TPP lawmakers, who together form a majority in the 113-seat legislature, have blocked the plan since the new session began on Sept. 20, as it fails to earmark funds incurred as a result of an amended law and resolutions adopted earlier this year in the legislature.
They have demanded that the Cabinet revise the budget plan and resubmit it.
DPP lawmakers said the opposition lawmakers were abusing their power and that they should not meddle with the executive body’s budget planning in such a way.
During the full session yesterday, opposition lawmakers voted together to reject a DPP motion to discuss the budgets.
At Thursday’s negotiations, DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) proposed to revise the budget plan and raise annual compensation for a logging ban from NT$30,000 to NT$40,000 per hectare next year, with subsequent compensation adjusted in line with the growth rate of the consumer price index.
His proposal would still fall short of the NT$60,000 required by amendments to the Logging Ban Compensation for Lands Reserved for Indigenous Peoples Act (原住民保留地禁伐補償條例) pushed through by the opposition in June.
However, Ker said that doubling the logging ban compensation all at once — which would mean increasing the budget allocated to the compensation from the planned NT$2.1 billion per year to NT$4.2 billion — was not feasible and unconstitutional, as the legislature is not permitted to raise budgets beyond what was proposed by the Cabinet.
The DPP hoped to resolve the budget deadlock, Ker said, but also warned of the possibility of the party bringing the disputes to the Constitutional Court.
His proposal was not accepted by the opposition, with KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) criticizing the DPP for not coming up with solutions to other disputes.
Fu was referring to those concerning the resolutions passed by the opposition to hike the price for government acquisition of public food stocks and government reimbursements for medical facilities.
The Cabinet’s current budget proposal fails to cover those costs, opposition lawmakers said.
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