Research On The Implementation Dilemma Of Budget Amendment Authority Of People’s Congress

The public budget is a legal annual revenue and expenditure planwhich is prepared by the government and approved by the legislativebranch. It is widely believed that the supreme goal of public budget andbudget supervision is to protect public interests by budgetary democracytheory, responsible government theory and principal-agent theory. As aresult, legislative branch has been naturally granted the power in budgetsupervision. The amendment authority of legislative branch in budgetreview and supervision is the power to amend the budget draft in budgetapproval, which has been generally recognized as one of the effectiveapproaches in supervising public administration, controlling publicfinance and promoting budgetary democracy. In some presidential systemrepresented by the USA, the legislative branch’s budget amendmentauthority is extensive and unlimited, while the one in parliamentarysystems like the United Kingdom is strictly limited. Despite of thespecific differences, the amendment authority of legislative branch hasbeen universally granted in most countries. Over the course of the past20years, the fiscal reform has played asignificant role in improving the budget system in China. However, itdidn’t reach the key problem on People’s Congress in budget amendmentauthority. As the most important part of the state supervision system, theessence of People’s Congress’s power focuses on budget reviewing andsupervising. Specifically, the Constitution and the Budget law don’t grantPeople’s Congress the budget amendment authority, which brings greatlimitations on its role in budget review and supervision. On the otherhand, some active explorations have been made by local People’sCongress during the past decades. Some provinces including Guangdongand Hebei mentioned People’s Congress’s budget amendment authority intheir ‘Budget Review and Supervision Regulations’. Moreover, someplaces like Wenling and Minhang have clearly granted this power onPeople’s Congress and they found inevitable dilemma in implementationdue to the lack of regulation.According to the explorations on legislative branch in regulationsand implementations, this paper intends to clarify the reasons for People’sCongress’s dilemma in implementing budget amendment authority, whichare summarized into two aspects. First, the dilemma in institutionalguarantee covers the problem in limited operability, meaning that the lawdoesn’t present definite regulations in proposal, approval and voteprocess. Besides, due to the lack of information, technology and human resources, People’s Congress sticks in the dock with the power allocationamong party, government and itself. Second, the dilemma in People’sCongress’s ability in budget review and supervision includes the problemin representative’s structure and do self’s duty ability, the budget officecommittee to undertake professional budgetary work and the advisorybody consist of budget experts to offer intellectual support. Therefore, itis necessary to realize People’s Congress substantive supervision ingovernment budget by granting powers on People’s Congress inConstitution and Budget Law.