By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter, with CNA
Legislators yesterday disagreed on the significance of the government’s planned social welfare budget for next year, with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) saying it surpassed the amounts set aside during the previous administration and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) saying that less money was being set aside for emergency relief operations.
At the press conference hosted by the KMT caucus, officials from the -Directorate--General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) addressed the social welfare budgets since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took power in May 2008.
Between 2009 and next year, they said, listed social welfare expenses accounted for an average 19.7 percent of the general government budget each year, higher than the 17.6 percent in the previous four-year period.
In response, DPP lawmakers told a press conference that the budget was a “very big boast.”
DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said that although the budget is up by NT$38.9 billion from the previous year, the lion’s share of the increased budget is planned for spending on national labor and health insurance.
“The budget for social welfare did increase by NT$38.9 billion, but it is another story when you take a deeper look at it,” Tsai said.
A little less than NT$37 billion of the increase is spent on social insurance, he said, including NT$10.6 billion that the Taipei City Government needs to reimburse the central government — a debt that started to accumulate when Ma was mayor from 1998 until 2006.
The actual allocations for emergency relief was cut by NT$955 million and the budget for the elderly farmer allowance has been cut by NT$1.65 billion as well, Tsai said.