The Legislative Yuan should put the brakes on its plan to hastily pass a long- stalled statute on encouraging industrial innovation to save the government from committing yet another policy blunder. It is regrettable that the executive branch has so far not made any improvements to the draft statute even though we already pointed out many of its deficiencies and flaws more than six months ago. The proposed statute was designed to promote industrial innovation and technological upgrading after a similar statute was invalidated at the end of last year. The failure to complete the new legislation earlier has left a 'window' in the government's major industrial development policy. It is a serious dereliction of administrative and legislative duties. But we find no reason for the legislature to rashly pass the Cabinet-drafted draft statute before the end of its current session late this month. Doing so would only have the legislation become a new source of problems and disputes. One of the controversies caused by the scrapped statute was its tax breaks for selected industries, but instead of plugging those holes, the new statute would reinstate most of those tax breaks. Passage of the draft bill would even more seriously erode our country's tax base and further complicate Taiwan's tax system. We once suggested that the government delete all tax incentive provisions in the draft statute and instead lower the corporate income tax rate to 17 percent. That would be more fair to all industrial sectors and meet the 'lean and mean' principle of tax administration. Much to our disappointment, the government has turned a deaf ear to our advice. 