Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Fu Kun-chi/Facebook
THE KMT AND TPP have acted to block the Executive Yuan’s draft of the Fiscal Planning Act. This was accomplished by postponing its first reading on the floor of the legislature and proposing no plans for it to be discussed at a later date. As such, the move de facto sends the Fiscal Planning Act back to the Executive Yuan.
For the move to occur, this required both the KMT and TPP to act in collaboration. The move indicates that the KMT and TPP may intend to continue to take a hard line on budgetary matters, with questions raised about whether they may attempt anything as drastic as moves earlier this year that cut 1/3rd of the government operational budget. Though the DPP opposed the move, they were outvoted by nine to seven.
It appears that this may continue to be the case. In particular, in preceding months, controversy had broken out regarding allocations and subsidies from the central government to the local government.
Unsurprisingly, with the drastic cut to the government’s budget earlier this year, this meant fewer subsidies and allocations to local governments. This was criticized, however, by the KMT. The KMT controls a number of local governments in Taiwan, even if it does not control the central government. As such, the KMT called for further spending allocation to local governments it controls.
Indeed, the DPP also wished to politicize the issue at the time, stating that it would prioritize local governments that supported the central government’s budget. At the same time, the Fiscal Planning Act draft from the Executive Yuan would have increased allocation to local governments from 1.1683 trillion NT, as passed by the KMT last year, to 1.2 trillion.
Previously, last year, the KMT sought to increase the allocation of a 70% to 30% split between the central and local governments to a 60% to 40% split. In response, the DPP has asserted that because the central government subsidizes many local programs, the split in funding between the central and local governments is already around 60% to 40%. Yet it is broadly a pattern that the KMT may aim to strip away funding from the central government to local governments it controls.
The aim of the KMT and TPP may simply be to stymie the Executive Yuan, as the budget for the Executive Yuan passed by the legislature exceeded the ceiling for government spending set by the Public Debt Act and could not be enacted. As the Executive Yuan’s proposed budget was based on the version of the Fiscal Planning Act that was dismissed, it would prove difficult for the Executive Yuan to come up with a differing budget.
More broadly, one observes that contention between the KMT-controlled legislature and the DPP-controlled executive branch continues regarding who has authority over the budget. The KMT’s drastic cuts to the budget earlier this year can be seen as a move intended to claim legislative authority over the budget. Drawing up the budget has historically been the right of the executive branch of government.
This is more broadly the case with many of the KMT’s controversial actions in the past few years. The controversial powers sought by the KMT that prompted the Bluebird Movement in 2024 were aimed at arrogating investigatory powers from the executive and judiciary to the legislature. Similarly, the KMT later passed legislation to freeze the Constitutional Court from operation, once the Constitutional Court struck down the powers sought by the KMT. Other proposals have included shifting authority over the National Communications Commission to the legislature and revising the Special Investigation Division of police and subjecting it to legislative authority, presumably to make it a tool for targeting political enemies of the KMT.
Partisan gridlock may be far from over in Taiwan’s legislature, then. Even so, it is to be seen if the budget proves as contentious as before.