‘Power of the purse’ not a weapon

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) has discovered an extraordinarily simple theory of constitutional government: If you have enough votes in the legislature, apparently you can attach almost any demand to a budget and call it oversight.

Her latest proposal freezes Premier Cho Jung-tai’s (卓榮泰) salary from next month through December. He can have it back after fulfilling what Weng considers his constitutional and legal obligations — including budgeting for legislation and countersigning laws — and submitting a written report to the Legislative Yuan for approval.

There is a perfectly respectable instrument for what Weng wants to do: a non-binding resolution. Legislatures around the democratic world use them to express condemnation, demand action or declare political positions without pretending that a majority vote creates powers the legislature does not possess.

Weng wants something different. She wants the resolution to bite.

If the KMT believes Cho has violated the Constitution or is unfit to govern, Taiwan’s constitutional system provides political and legal mechanisms for confronting him. Most obviously, legislators can pursue a vote of no confidence. What they should not assume is that a legislative majority allows them to invent new punishments: obey us, report back to us, obtain our approval — or lose your salary.

A majority gives legislators the votes to exercise the powers they possess. It does not give them the power to invent new ones, a distinction that seems increasingly lost on Weng.

Her assault on the Presidential Office’s budget offers another example of the same mentality. After cuts and freezes to the Presidential Office’s state affairs expenditure reportedly affected orders for Mid-Autumn Festival gift boxes from shelter workshops, Weng defended her approach by calling budgetary action the legislature’s “only remaining, very humble means of checks and balances.”

There is nothing humble about wielding budgetary power without sufficient regard for what lies downstream.

This does not mean that all government expenditure must be protected because someone benefits from it. Legislators have the right and the responsibility to scrutinize public spending. Waste should be cut. Dubious programs should be challenged. Officials should be made to explain how taxpayers’ money is spent.

However, scrutiny requires discrimination. A scalpel is an instrument of oversight. A hammer swung at everything in sight is not.

The shelter workshops controversy exposed precisely this problem. The political target was the Presidential Office; the consequences reached workers who had nothing to do with the constitutional battle Weng wanted to fight.

If a minister refuses a legislative demand, would legislators freeze his salary too? If another constitutional official makes a decision Weng dislikes, should his office lose electricity? At what point does “budget oversight” cease to mean deciding how public money should be spent and begin to mean using money to force other branches of government to obey the legislative majority?

Democratic government is not simply majority rule. Every constitutional democracy deliberately places boundaries around majorities. Parliament legislates and scrutinizes. The executive administers. Courts adjudicate. Each possesses powers the others cannot simply appropriate because they have the votes.

Perhaps most revealing is the reported reaction inside the KMT itself. Some KMT legislators are apparently so frustrated by Weng’s actions that they have privately asked caucus leader Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) to “control her.” Others reportedly worry that her behavior could damage the party’s electoral prospects.

If KMT legislators believe Weng has gone too far, their constitutional remedy is wonderfully uncomplicated: stop voting for proposals they consider excessive.

A political party cannot repeatedly provide the votes and then distance itself from the consequences when public opinion turns sour.

Weng might be less an aberration than a useful revelation. She exposes what can happen when a legislative majority begins to confuse winning votes with possessing unlimited authority.

Taiwan needs a strong legislature. It needs legislators willing to challenge the executive, expose waste and resist abuses of power, but checks and balances work in both directions. The legislature exists to check executive power; constitutional limits exist to check legislative power as well.

The power of the purse is one of parliament’s greatest constitutional weapons, and that is precisely why it should not be treated as a toy.

John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong living in Taiwan.

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