PING ASSAILS P83-B INSERTIONS: ‘PORK TO STAY’
Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Wednesday railed against “corruption-driven insertions” of up to P83.2 billion in government projects that the House of Representatives allegedly made just before the bicameral committee adopted the final version of the proposed P4.1-trillion national budget for 2020.
The Senate ratified the draft spending program without any objection as Lacson was not around when Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, chair of the finance committee, presented the bicameral report to the plenary.
Lacson, whose eagle-eyed scrutiny of the annual spending bill has made him unpopular among House members, said the eleventh-hour changes to the government’s expenditure program prompted him to skip the signing of the final version of the proposed budget by members of the Senate-house conference panels on Wednesday in Makati City.
Lump-sum appropriations
He said some of his fellow lawmakers insisted on injecting lump-sum appropriations into the national budget despite the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that declared these as pork and therefore unconstitutional.
“No such last-minute insertions could be said of the senators since we stuck to the Senate version of the 2020 [draft] budget [that we] passed, giving our counterparts all the time to scrutinize them,” Lacson said in a text message to the Inquirer.
“Pork is here to stay … Bad habits are indeed hard to break,” he lamented. “It is revolting to note that legislators keep on dipping their dirty fingers [into] our national budget in spite of pending cases involving the same issue.”
Angara admitted that there were various changes to the proposed budget made by House members, which they deemed needed by their constituents.
Asked if these were pork, he said: “If it’s a line item [in the budget], according to the Supreme Court, it’s not pork.”
“We tried to conform with the decision of the Supreme Court … and we tried to avoid lump sums. We tried to place projects in line item [entries] and prevent post-enactment legislation,” Angara said.
Lacson said he hoped President Duterte would “again exercise his political will in vetoing line items that will obviously waste people’s tax money” as he did with P75 billion in belated alterations the House introduced to the 2019 budget.
Presidential veto
Said Lacson: “I have high hopes that [the] President … will again display his aversion to corruption.”
According to the senator, his office received on Tuesday night from the Senate Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office a USB drive that contained two digital files—a “source” file and a “list” file— from the House.
He said the digital device contained the “last-minute insertions” of the House covering 1,253 budget items worth P83.2 billion, which were saved in the source file.
This was apparently the basis of the list file of 742 projects amounting to P16.3 billion, which were “inserted in the bicameral report” that the House and the Senate approved, Lacson said.
“As it turned out, what we saw are several lump-sum items and vaguely described infrastructure projects, multipurpose buildings and flood control projects uniformly budgeted at P60 million each,” he said.
“In due time, I will expose all those lump-sum insertions as we continue to examine the source file and list file contained in the USB sent by the House,” he added.
Biggest allocations
Among the provinces with the biggest allocations, Lacson said, were Albay (P670 million), his home province of Cavite (P580 million), Sorsogon (P570 million), Batangas (P502 million), Bulacan (P440 million), Pangasinan (P420 million) and Cebu (P410 million).
“Since there is no preliminary explanation from the House regarding the two files, we cannot ascertain if indeed only P16.3 billion or the bigger amount of P83.2 billion was inserted at the last minute prior to the bicameral [approval],” he said.
“What is clear, though, is that there are still lump sums and vaguely described projects that are now part of the bicameral report,” he said.
In addition, the senator said there were 117 flood control projects costing P3.2 billion which “dominate the insertions,” eight of which were similarly allotted with P60 million.
Lacson said he told Angara that despite his objection, he was OK with the signing of the bicameral report “as we were both looking at the higher interest of the country.”
“A stalemate could result again in a reenacted budget, which will not be good to the economy,” Lacson said.
2018 fiasco
“Having said that, we will forward to the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) and [the] OP (Office of the President) whatever final findings we have on the proposed 2020 national budget,” he added.
Lacson’s discovery of the insertions cast a pall on the cel
ebratory mood in the House over the early passage of the budget. The House ratified the proposed spending program for 2020 on Wednesday, preventing a repeat of last year’s parliamentary debacle that resulted in a reenacted budget and a rollback in economic growth projections.
But the exposure of the alleged insertions could mean a replay of last year’s P75-billion fiasco for the House.
House Majority Leader Martin Romualdez, however, shrugged off Lacson’s claims, noting that the conference committee adopted the reconciled version of the 2020 budget proposal unanimously.
“Of course, we always respect the views and opinions of our fellow congressmen and senators and we share the same zeal” in watching out for pork, Romualdez told reporters
Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano issued a statement patting the conference committee on the back for a “thorough review and timely approval” of the 2020 budget, but without referring to Lacson’s discovery.
“We passed a budget with no pork, no parked funds, and no delays with full transparency,” Cayetano said. “While there is no perfect budget, both the Senate and the House of Representatives have identified areas where funds have been underutilized for various reasons.”
Cayetano said the early approval of the 2020 budget would give President Duterte ample time to review its provisions and “ensure that it is aligned with the priority programs of the administration.”
“We now leave it up to the departments, agencies and the rest of the executive branch to fully implement the projects and programs with no corruption and with full transparency,” he said.