Taiwan’s President William Lai has once again failed to secure a vote on his $40 billion special defense budget. Through a 10-8 vote in a procedural committee, KMT and TPP lawmakers have blocked the DPP’s efforts to include the budget in the agenda for the Dec. 26 legislative session. This procedural technique has been used multiple times since Lai first proposed the spending in November.
The decision came during Chinese military exercises around Taiwan, which the KMT blamed on the DPP, saying that Chinese military equipment never crossed the Taiwan Strait median line while the KMT was in power. “The KMT’s resolute position has been to invest in combat readiness, but also to invest in peace,” said Lo Chih-chiang, the secretary-general of the KMT legislative caucus.
