Blue and white love Yanhui and love "travel"? The longest session in history was 211 days... last year the inspection fees soared past 1.32 million

The third session of the current Legislative Yuan, which started on February 25, 2025, was postponed for the second time to August 31 of the same year under the joint efforts of Blue and White. The session lasted for a total of 211 days, setting a record for the longest session since 2012. However, during the postponement period, the number of days legislators spent on inspections was actually more than the actual committee meetings. The annual inspection expenses increased by about 210,000 yuan compared with the previous year. The total annual inspection expenses were 1.321 million yuan, calling into question the real purpose of Blue and White’s repeated proposals to postpone the session in this Congress.

Last year, the Public Supervisory Alliance pointed out that according to the Legislative Yuan Proceedings Bulletin Information Network, the third session of the Legislative Yuan was postponed for 3 months, but the number of meeting days and the proportion of inspections have changed significantly. First, the number of meeting days was directly reduced by 76 days, and some convening committees were suspended during the postponement period. Failure to schedule or arrange a large number of inspection tours has prevented further progress on many important people's livelihood bills. Secondly, in order to save the recall election, various committees have many inspection tours that have nothing to do with the disaster or the bills, reducing them to tourism and pile-tying tours.

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Li Youtan, director of the Public Supervisory Alliance, criticized that during the postponement of the third session, legislators spent more days conducting inspections than actual committee meetings. Some of the contents of these inspections were not even related to the disaster or the bill, and they did not show any results. Is this kind of "inspection" to provide feedback on public sentiment, or is it reduced to local staking and tourism?

In addition, DPP legislators also questioned that frequent postponements of the 11th Legislative Yuan during its term have almost become the norm. However, not only did the number of bills reviewed during the adjournment period not increase significantly, Legislative Yuan Secretary-General Zhou Wanlai also issued a document asking each committee to properly control the use of the budget in the second half of the year. It is obvious that the overall resource utilization of the Legislative Yuan is under pressure. During the postponement period, the Legislative Yuan must continue to work overtime. Whether it is personnel, administrative or related expenditures, it will increase the burden on public funds. It may be a waste of people's money and money. Therefore, the proposal is to freeze the budget of the Legislative Yuan this year by 500,000 yuan.

In the face of relevant doubts, according to the written report on the budget freeze submitted by the Legislative Yuan, regarding the use of inspections (domestic travel expenses) for each session of the 11th session, each committee inspection followed the "Key Points for Reimbursement of Domestic Travel Expenses" and "The Principles for Reimbursement of Publicly Expensed Assistant Expenses for Legislators' Participation in Domestic Inspections" and other regulations, and submitted vouchers for verification and write-off. The inspection expenses in 2013 were 1.1 million yuan, 1.321 million yuan in 2014, and 838,078 yuan in 2015 (statistics to the end of August).

The Legislative Yuan announced that the postponement of each session this term included a total of 46 days in 2013 and a total of 113 days in 2014. It is obvious that the number of postponements in 2014 was much greater than that in 2013, and the inspection costs increased in 114 compared with 2013. An increase of approximately 210,000 yuan; for water and electricity bills, water consumption in 2014 decreased by approximately 8,500 kilowatt hours compared with 2013, and the electricity price in 2014 decreased by 290,000 kilowatt hours compared with 2013; in addition, overtime pay for discussion staff decreased by approximately 700,000 yuan in 2014 compared with 2013. The situation in which the Court must continue to hold meetings due to adjournments does not seem to be directly related to the expenditure of relevant expenses, but depends on the agenda set by the convening members of each committee and the agenda of the Court.