An op-ed in the Washington Post by Lai Ching-te published yesterday emphasized plans to increase the military budget to 40 billion USD, which would be 3.3% of the GDP next year and 5% by 2030...
With the budget cuts pushed for by the KMT, it has proven somewhat complicated to note what has actually been cut, and what government services are likely to be affected by the cuts...
With recent wide-ranging budget cuts passed by the KMT, the KMT has sought to defend the cuts as necessary for fiscal security in Taiwan. To this extent, the KMT has claimed that the cuts only amount to 3% of the budget and that such budget-cutting also occurred during the Tsai administration. By contrast, President Lai Ching-te of the DPP has framed the cuts and freezes as amounting to 30% of the available funding. There have never been cuts on this scale in the past twenty years, showing that against the claims of the KMT, such budget-cutting is not normal in the legislature...
The KMT and TPP successfully passed the third reading of legislation that would enact substantial cuts to the government budget earlier today. This took place on the heels of a marathon 20-hour session that led to the budget being passed before the Legislative Yuan adjourns for the Lunar New Year...
