Kuomintang caucus whip Fu Kun-chi bowed in apology on September 1 after the legislature's cut and freeze of the Presidential Office's state affairs fund derailed 15,000 Mid-Autumn gift-box orders from sheltered workshops. The Presidential Office called it a fake apology that shifted blame, and said the full order had already been made up with help from President 
Lai Ching-te and the public.
How were the orders caught up in the budget? KMT and Taiwan People's Party legislators used their majority to pass KMT legislator Weng Hsiao-ling's motion to cut and freeze all NT$30 million of the fund, forcing the cancellation of boxes ordered from 37 sheltered workshops and disability groups, the Liberty Times reported. The motion, PTS reported, came in this year's central government budget, which passed its third reading in August. Fu said the caucus had cut budgets because Lai and Premier Cho Jung-tai refused to countersign major defense and livelihood bills, but had failed to exempt the mooncake purchases.
What did the KMT offer? Fu said the caucus apologized to the public, would take full responsibility and would absorb the orders he said the Presidential Office had abandoned, and that next year it would require the fund to buy three times as many sheltered-workshop mooncakes. He, caucus secretary-general Hsu Yu-chen and legislator Lo Ting-wei then bowed deeply, CNA reported. KMT chairwoman 
Cheng Li-wun decided the party would buy 15,000 boxes, and Chen I-hsin, head of its culture and communications committee, said it had ordered the roughly 10,000 that affected businesses could supply and had decided to buy about 5,000 more from other workshops. Chen said Cheng stressed the purchase had no complicated political purpose and called for political disputes not to override humanity.
How did the Presidential Office respond? Spokeswoman Kuo Ya-hui said the apology was insincere and that the orders had already been placed when the fund was cut to zero, calling the claim that the office abandoned them a reversal of black and white. She said the new year's budget review should return to reason. Secretary-General Pan Men-an said on Facebook that the 15,000-box order had reached the original total in under two weeks, after Lai gave NT$200,000 of his own money and the office enlisted businesses and the public, CNA reported. "They should not become the victims of political battles," Pan said of the workers.
Figures referenced: Lai Ching-te, Cheng Li-wun. — JudgeMarket.
