The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which holds a majority in the Legislature, has agreed to send the central government’s 2022 budget plan back to several legislative committees for review, backing down on its decision to bypass the committee review stage earlier this week.
During an inter-party negotiation held Thursday afternoon, the DPP caucus said it would propose on the legislative floor Friday to have different parts of the budget bill sent back to the relevant committees for review.
At the same time, all the party caucuses also decided that the various committees would complete their respective reviews of the government’s budget plan by Dec. 30 and that the bill would clear the Legislature no later than Jan. 28, 2022.
The DPP on Tuesday used its majority to push through a 55-26 vote in favor of immediately moving the budget bill past the committee stage to a second reading after accusing the opposition Kuomintang of deliberately holding up the committee review process.
The move sparked outrage among opposition lawmakers, who described the situation as unprecedented and criticized the DPP for disregarding legislative procedures.
The standard procedure is for different parts of a budget bill to be referred to the relevant committees for review. Once a budget plan is approved by all the committees, the bill then proceeds to the legislative floor for a second reading, before moving on to a third reading, in which only textual errors in a bill will be changed.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel