Taiwan's Executive Yuan has spent NT$500 million frozen by the legislature, after placing the frozen sum under personnel costs because the freeze motion did not specify a budget line item. The Kuomintang (KMT) said the move broke the Budget Act and called for Premier Cho Jung-tai to be impeached, removed from office and investigated, CNA reported.
How was the frozen money spent? The freeze, which the Liberty Times reported the KMT and the Taiwan People's Party placed on NT$500 million of the Executive Yuan's general budget for last year, has not been lifted. With no line item named, the Executive Yuan classed the amount as personnel costs, a statutory expense, and spent it under the legal rule that civil servants' pay must not fall into arrears, getting around the freeze. Chang Yu-meng said the two parties had been "harmed by their own stupidity." The Executive Yuan said it respected the legislature's budget resolution and that all spending followed regulations and statutory procedure, CNA reported.
Why does the KMT call it illegal? Chen I-hsin, who chairs the KMT's Culture and Communications Committee, said in a press release that turning frozen business expenses into personnel costs violates the Budget Act's limits on moving money between budget items and uses executive power to hollow out the legislature's budget review. He said the act bars expenditure categories from being transferred into personnel funding, and that the Executive Yuan's own budget-execution guidelines bar personnel costs from receiving money from other categories. Until the unfreezing procedure is complete, the executive is bound by the legislature's resolution, Chen said, calling the spending an illegal budget trick meant to evade parliamentary oversight. The Executive Yuan was treating the legislature "as air" and the Budget Act "as waste paper," he said, adding that Cho was unfit to be premier and should be impeached and removed immediately.
How did the DPP respond? Chuang Jui-hsiung, secretary-general of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus in the legislature, called the dispute excessive political sparring by the opposition, aimed only at making headlines, CNA reported. He said the Executive Yuan's approach this time had been partly unavoidable, but that the legislature also had things to review and should make future budget motions more precise.
