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“In accordance with the powers of Congress, all of us can introduce an amendment. That’s our legislative power. If the President submits the budget, we can’t skirt our duty to amend it. What are we, a rubber stamp?” Escudero said by phone, chuckling.

As the pork barrel scandal roiled Congress, 15 senators opted to have each of their P200-million annual PDAF allocation deleted from the 2014 budget, as did Vice President Jejomar Binay.

That was P3.2 billion less than the House of Representatives-approved P2.268-trillion budget. In the end, both chambers approved a P2.265-trillion budget that President Aquino signed into law before Christmas.

The other nine senators decided to realign their respective allocations.

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Breakdown

Based on data culled by the Inquirer from the 2014 General Appropriations Act, four senators allocated the funds to the following:

– Estrada—Manila, P100 million; Caloocan City, P50 million where Mayor Oscar Malapitan is a political ally; and Lla-lo, Cagayan province, P50 million, where an airport is being built to serve the Cagayan Special Economic Zone.

– Lapid—Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), P193 million; Department of Health (DOH), P5 million; and Department of Social Welfare and Development, P2 million.

– Revilla—DPWH, P84.5 million; DOH, P75 million; and University of the Philippines, P35 million.

– Trillanes—DOH-Office of the Secretary, P102.45 million; Commission on Higher Education, P36.2 million; Philippine Army, P27.95 million;  Philippine Navy, P22 million; Philippine National Police, P7.4 million; and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, P4 million.

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Lump-sum items

“The Supreme Court was not clear on whether lawmakers could realign the funds or not because it is clear that Congress has the power of  the purse and has the prerogative where government money should be spent. What it was clear on was that lump-sum items should be discontinued and that everything in the budget should be itemized,” Colmenares said in a phone interview.

He said the House practically realigned P930 billion worth of items in the 2014 budget, including the pork barrel, because it wanted to ensure that all expenses were itemized and not carried as lump sums.

“So why does the President have to give his clearance before releasing the funds realigned by the senators? This is still patronage politics, the PDAF was just converted into presidential pork,” he said.

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Not an insertion

“I will contest the use of the word ‘insertion,’” he said. “We’ve been very transparent with everything.”

Escudero said Estrada’s identification of the LGUs did not violate the Supreme Court ruling that declared unconstitutional all provisions of the law that allowed legislators  “to wield any form of post-enactment authority” in the implementation of the budget.

“His identification of the LGUs does not violate the Supreme Court decision. That’s part of our function in Congress. It’s well within our right to review and approve the budget. This is preenactment intervention,” he said.

“With the 2014 budget, there was no post-enactment intervention,” he added, referring to old practices by lawmakers in identifying projects and beneficiaries of pork barrel while the budget was being implemented.

Escudero said Estrada had “no say” at all in the implementation of the assistance to LGUs.

“It’s completely in the hands of the executive department, including the decision to release or not to release the fund, or to ask for a program of work. Completely, Jinggoy has no say in that,” he said.

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Plunder complaint

Estrada is facing a plunder complaint in the Office of the Ombudsman, together with Revilla and Juan Ponce Enrile, businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles and 34 others over the P10-billion pork barrel scam.

Escudero said the Senate had been “very careful” not to violate the Supreme Court ruling and even quoted its decision on post-enactment intervention in the budget, and incorporated “transparency and accountability” provisions that would hold liable any official caught misusing funds.

“We removed all post-enactment interventions. Now they can’t remove from us the function of amending any bill, including the budget,” he said. “That power can’t be taken away.”

He advised the public to closely monitor the disposition of the funds.

“The control mechanism is not to have it released, or monitor the release,” he said.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/

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As I See It

Pork barrel lives, in another guise

By Neal H. Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Friday, January 10th, 2014
     
Like Dracula, the pork barrel is still alive, only in another form. It turns out that nine senators merely realigned a total of P1.8 billion and congressmen P930 billion of their pork barrel in the 2014 budget despite a Supreme Court ruling that the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), the official name of the allocation, is unconstitutional.

Realignment means transferring the budget allocated for an approved item in a project to another item. The P200-million PDAF of each of the nine senators has been transferred, in the 2014 General Appropriations Act, to the Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Health, Department of Social Welfare and Development, University of the Philippines, Commission on Higher Education, Philippine Army, Philippine Navy, Philippine National Police, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, calamity fund, and local government units.

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On the other hand, this is the pertinent provision of the Constitution (Article VI, Section 25): “No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of appropriations; however, the President, Senate President, House Speaker, Chief Justice and heads of constitutional commissions may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.”

Does that provision authorize the transfer of the PDAF, already declared unconstitutional by the high court, to other departments?

As I see it, it does not. The realigned amounts were not savings from items in the budgets of the departments to which they were given. But lawyers and members of Congress see things differently from the layman. They can interpret, twist, and find loopholes in the law to justify what they want.

The realignments were not put to a vote. The senators had agreed in an earlier caucus to let each senator do what he/she wants to do with his/her pork allocation.

“The Supreme Court was not clear on whether lawmakers could realign the funds or not because it is clear that Congress has the power of the purse and has the prerogative where government money should be spent,” says Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares. “What it was clear on was that lump-sum items should be discontinued and that everything in the budget should be itemized.”

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The realignments are “raising some alarm bells” because of the controversies involving the PDAF, he says. “But what happened in the past has not been proven yet.”

Members of the House still insist that their scholars and medical patients should continue to get the assistance they used to get from their pork barrel.

Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga says executive agencies, particularly the DepEd, DOH, DSWD, DPWH, Tesda and Department of Labor and Employment, should draw up guidelines to ensure that lawmakers’ constituents will be able to continue receiving medical and burial assistance, scholarships and skills training.

The 2014 budget lists the various infrastructure projects that the House members had identified, like roads and bridges, water supply systems, and multipurpose buildings.

Each House member identified five infrastructure projects costing a minimum of P2 million each but with a total limit of P24.5 million.

“Until now there are no clear rules and regulations, and our constituents are inquiring about [the matter],” Barzaga says. “Part of the Supreme Court’s ruling is for the Executive to find solutions to ensure that the services offered by lawmakers’ PDAF will continue.”

There are reportedly 248,000 scholars of lawmakers from 73 legislative districts. These scholars still have a chance of receiving funding for their education from the 2014 budget because it has a provision that the CHEd should ensure that scholars whose funding came from other sources will continue to receive assistance.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/

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