No pork insertions but fund requests by Duterte, Cabinet – Andaya

Rolando Andaya Jr.

A number of “very unusual” belated requests by President Rodrigo Duterte and certain Cabinet members, not pork insertions by members of the House of Representatives, held up the passage of the proposed P3.757-trillion budget for 2019, House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. said on Tuesday.

At a news briefing, Andaya dismissed the claim of Sen. Panfilo Lacson that the approval of next year’s expenditure program was stalled by last-minute insertions of funds by House members for their pet projects.

As if to prove Lacson wrong, the House acted swiftly, voting 196-8 in approving for the third and final reading the general appropriations bill during their regular plenary session.

The approval was eight days ahead of the date earlier set by a House official for the passage of the measure.

A House leader on Monday said the chamber would be able to pass the budget on third and final reading on Nov. 28, which would leave the Senate little time, according to Lacson, to scrutinize the bill before the Christmas break.

P10 billion lower

Andaya said the House would immediately transmit to the Senate the approved appropriation, which was P10 billion lower than the current national budget.

He, however, maintained that the decision to pass the proposed allocations was not in response to the senator’s allegations that the House had intentionally delayed the approval of the appropriations measure.

No reenacted budget

“There’s no more delay just to allay the fears that the budget will be reenacted or that we’re stalling,” Andaya told reporters.

“It was very clear to the leadership of the Senate last week that they will get the budget on time … And to make it clear, we will not have a reenacted budget for next year,” he said.

On Monday, Lacson accused House members of flouting their own rules “just to make way for their pork.”

“And I dare say, it’s all the fault of the … House that their insertions, aka pork barrel allocations, which I guess is their main reason for the delay, will not be implemented if the national government operates under a reenacted budget,” Lacson said.

Compliant

Asked if the proposed budget approved by House was pork-laden as Lacson claimed, Andaya, a Camarines Sur representative, said: “No. Everything we’re doing here is compliant with all pertinent laws and the Supreme Court decision.”

In 2015, the high court declared unconstitutional the Priority Development Assistance Fund, the Disbursement Acceleration Program and other similar discretionary funds.

President’s requests

Andaya said the House had been receiving several requests, including those from the President, to set aside funds for projects, which were not in the original budget proposal submitted by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

“It was our duty to look at it one by one. You cannot just speed that up and sacrifice the quality of our work. So it would take some time,” Andaya said.

“Until now, we haven’t cleared them yet with Cabinet members. We were swamped by a very unusual number of requests coming from the executive,” he added.

Housing for soldiers

Asked to elaborate, he said the President particularly asked the House to earmark funds for housing for military personnel and other infrastructure projects.

Andaya could not tell the amount the President was requesting, but said among those he wanted to fund was a P2-billion housing project for soldiers.

“You cannot just approve the requests because you have to get it from somewhere,” he said. “So there lies the problem. It’s easy to approve them, but where to look for [funds] for it, that’s where the challenge lies.”