Blue and White passed the 22nd Amendment to the Elderly Welfare Law on the third reading on the 16th, and happily took photos at the Legislative Yuan afterwards. (File photo)
Last week, Blue and White forced the amendment of the "Elderly Welfare Law" to pass the third reading, but it was found that two important sources of subsidies for disadvantaged elders were deleted. The hasty amendment of the law was a mistake. Originally, the disadvantaged should be subsidized for "partial expenses" and "expenses other than health insurance benefits." The future depends on the attitude of the local government. However, this is not the only case in which opposition legislators are outsourcing legislation. Looking back at the 2024 blue and white fiscal planning law, errors in mathematical formulas were revealed, and the revised NCC organic law was missing an implementation date. In the end, the law had to be re-amended, which also made voters question the quality of this current blue and white legislators.
The rules and formulas written in blue and white are wrong! The Financial Planning Law is revised three times in one year.
Please read on...
On December 20, 2024, the Legislative Yuan, in collaboration with Blue and White, passed the amendment to the "new version of the Financial Planning Law" on the third reading. The amendment expanded the scale of the central government's overall distribution of taxes and adjusted the allocation of financial resources between the central and local governments. Not only did local governments increase the overall distribution of taxes by 416.5 billion yuan, the amendment also clearly stated that the central government's general subsidies to local governments should not be lower than the year before the law was implemented.
After the third reading was passed, it was discovered that the amendments led by Blue and White were not combined with a rights review, which resulted in the failure of some central government policy projects to be smoothly promoted or continued. The allocation formula widened the gap between urban and rural areas, giving an advantage to cities and counties with dense population and developed industry and commerce. The content of the allocation formula was contradictory and unclear. It also resulted in the 2026 centrally coordinated tax allocation amount announced by the Ministry of Finance at the end of August, and 34.5 billion yuan could not be allocated.
However, Blue and White did not regard correcting the erroneous formula as the primary goal. On November 14, 2025, they made a surprise move and voted directly in the Legislative Yuan to pass the "Revised Financial Planning Law." The adopted version did not deal with the provisions of the allocation formula error, but required that the central government's general and programmatic subsidies to local governments cannot be changed. As for the controversial part of the formula, the Legislative Yuan finally passed the amendment on November 20 to resolve the error, amending the "Financial Planning Law" a total of three times in one year.
He wanted to boycott the ruling party and forced the NCC to amend the organic law, but he failed to do so.
At the beginning of taking office in the current Legislative Yuan, Blue and White listed "abolition of the NCC term extension clause" as the primary political goal. Therefore, on July 16, 2024, the "Amendment to Article 4 of the National Communications Commission Organic Law" was passed on third reading, stipulating that NCC members can be re-elected once, and those who have been re-elected cannot be re-elected; the "transitional clause" that allows old members to extend their terms until the day before the new members take office is deleted. It also added that "when a member becomes vacant, the term of his successor member shall be until the expiration date of the original term." If the number of members does not reach the full number due to disagreement with the Legislative Yuan or vacancy, the Executive Yuan shall make up the nominations within 3 months.
However, because Blue and White omitted the provisions of "Article 16 of the National Communications Commission Organic Act", the implementation date of this law will be determined by the Executive Yuan. The Executive Yuan delayed announcing the implementation date in accordance with the law, and asked the original deputy chairman Ong Baizhong to extend his appointment and temporarily act as the NCC chairman, thus defeating the political boycott of the opposition parties.
On November 15 of the same year, Lan Bai submitted another motion to amend "Article 16 of the National Communications Commission Organic Law". Although the original article "the date of implementation of this law shall be determined by order of the Executive Yuan" was retained, "the 113th year of the Republic of China" was added. Article 4 amended on July 16 and Article 16 amended on November 15, 2013, "will come into effect on December 1, 2013", ultimately preventing Weng Baizong from being extended or acting as chairman from December 1.
Blue and White amend the Elderly Welfare Law and severely delete the "Vulnerable Elderly 2 Subsidy".
With the nine-in-one election around the corner, Blue and White pushed forward in the Legislative Yuan last Friday to amend Article 22 of the "Elderly Welfare Law" to exempt seniors over the age of 65 from paying health insurance premiums. However, the original article stipulates that local governments should provide three parts of subsidies for disadvantaged elders: health insurance premiums, part-payment of expenses, and expenses other than health insurance benefits. Blue and White has simply deleted the legal source that requires local governments to provide disadvantaged elders with part-payment of expenses and expenses other than health insurance benefits. Only health insurance premiums are fully subsidized by the central government.
Democratic Progressive Party legislator Lin Chuyin criticized that the Ministry of Health and Welfare originally formulated the "Measures for Subsidy for Elderly Persons Who Cannot Afford to Participate in National Health Insurance" based on Article 22. Now that the relevant provisions of the parent law have been deleted, medical subsidies for low- and middle-income elderly people have lost their legal basis.
