CORPORATE WATCH
fund federal government operations and agencies, or when the President refuses to sign into law such bills or resolutions. In European parliamentary systems, the executive must maintain the approval of the legislature to remain in power and typically an election is triggered if a budget fails to pass. In other presidential systems, the executive branch typically has the authority to keep the government functioning even without an approved budget (Zurcher, Anthony “US Shutdown Has Other Nations Confused and Concerned,” BBC News, Oct. 3, 2013).
And that is how it is, in the Philippines, that the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative is blurry, with regards to the approval of the budget and its appropriations. Same as in the US, Congress has the sole power of the purse and responsibility for appropriating government funds. An appropriations bill must be passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and then go to the President for approval. If the President signs the bill, it becomes law. In the US, if the President vetoes it, it can go back to Congress for a two-thirds vote or the President can stand pat and declare a shutdown. But in the Philippines, if instead the President vetoes it and the fiscal year commences, the previous year’s budget is “reenacted,” or disbursements follow the last year’s allocations, inclusive of savings. Quietly, the executive always wins.
One can say that in our country, there is no shutdown, only “Shut up,” when it comes to conflicts between the President and Congress over where our (tax) money is to be spent.
And in our politics and culture, a shutdown would perhaps be only redundant and superfluous to the tacit acceptance of the “Shut up” that settles apprehensions and conflicts between and among the
One can say that in our country, there is no shutdown, only “Shut up,” when it comes to conflicts between the President and Congress over where our (tax) money is to be spent.
distinct and independent executive, legislative and judicial powers of government on the one hand, and the common good, on the other hand. Trump declared early in the new year that he could “continue the shutdown for months or even years” to force funding of the border wall and is considering declaring a national emergency to build the wall without congressional approval, but softened later in the week when he started “grasping the consequences of an extended shutdown, including sharp reductions in SNAP payments and delays of $140 billion in tax refunds” (www. wsj.com, Jan 11, 2019). Would our President Rodrigo Duterte hesitate to declare a national emergency and use his emergency powers, anyway? Shut up!
The US government shutdown has two main teaching points for us, small democratic economies. First and most important is the separation of powers between the executive and legislative (and judicial) branches of government that ensures the common good by the ingrained system of checks and balances ruled by the Constitution. In the US, the allocation of $5.7 billion for the Mexico-US border wall goes beyond the political egos of Trump and the Republicans, viss-vis the Democrats. It would not even be fair to compare the cost of the shutdown versus the cost to the economy, caused by this difference in opinions about spending the people’s money on building a border wall. But it clearly shows the conflict in the American soul between two groups of political leaders: those in the level of principles, who believe in and push for the openness to human rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness — above and beyond race and nationality; and those who are focused on the tactical details of legal and illegal immigration, which anyway and by the way, also show opposing views on those universal human rights.
Would that the “opposition” in current Philippine politics rise to their sworn duty to analyze conflicts in governance, and act as true check-and-balance, in behalf of the common people, to the acknowledged and accepted “strong-man rule” that seems to have surreptitiously accustomed society to the “New Now” of “Shut up” as the final settlement of differences.
And connected to that is the second teaching point from