Cabinet will not countersign youth account bill
By Chung Li-hua and Esme Yeh / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The Executive Yuan will not countersign the opposition-backed Youth Development and Future Account Act (台灣兒少成長及未來帳戶條例), which passed the third reading in the legislature last month, Cabinet spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said yesterday.
It is the sixth bill passed by the Legislative Yuan that the Executive Yuan has refused to endorse.
President William Lai (賴清德) on May 27 already convened a high-level national security conference and announced the nation’s new family support policy, which the Cabinet approved the following day, she said.
The Executive Yuan building in Taipei is pictured in an undated photograph.
Photo: Taipei Times
The policy includes 18 measures to support childrearing families, aiming to upgrade “subsidy-based childcare” into “publicly supported childcare,” Lee said.
One of the 18 measures would offer each child or teenager NT$5,000 (US$157) per month in growth allowance, which has been included in the central government’s budget for next year, she said.
The allowance would be directly given to eligible children or teenagers from next year, Lee said.
The monthly growth allowance, combined with a development account for disadvantaged adolescents, would ensure that at least NT$1.08 million would be given to each child throughout their first 18 years, she said.
Such a measure helps fulfill social fairness and justice, as it requires the government to deposit money in the accounts at a “1:1” ratio with the parents of children from disadvantaged families, Lee said.
In contrast, the youth account bill passed by the legislature on July 24 includes savings from both sponsoring corporations and the child-raising families, she said.
That could lead to rich families saving more and getting more money, further widening the wealth gap and contravening the constitutional principle of proportionality, Lee said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Culture and Communications Committee director Charles Chen (陳以信) yesterday said the Lai administration was once again using its executive power to boycott a bill passed by the legislature.
That is not a constitutional dispute over a single bill, but evidence of the Cabinet’s continued contempt of the legislature and refusal to recognize the legislative majority, he said.
“This is executive power overriding legislative power. The Lai administration is bullying the legislature, which represents the public will,” he said.
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