Senate deliberates on P2.27Tr budget amid ‘pork’ row

Senate President Franklin Drilon. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate  on  Tuesday  began  deliberations on  the  proposed P2.268 trillion national  budget amid corruption allegations in the use of  legislators’ Priority  Development  Assistance Fund (PDAF) known as  “pork barrel”.

No less than Senate President Franklin Drilon recognized that for the first time, the Senate opened its budget deliberations  “under an  environment of mistrust, distrust, and even anger of the  people on the legislature and in the government in general because of allegations of corruption and abuses in the PDAF.”

“We can’t ignore that. That’s where we are today. Indeed, we should hold ourselves accountable to our people and we should listen to what our people are saying,” Drilon said in his  opening statement immediately after the committee on finance headed by Senator  Francis “Chiz” Escudero  began  its proceeding a little after 9 a.m.

“Having said that, we will be remised with our duty if we do not exercise our constitutional duty to scrutinize the budget. We should continue to exercise this mandate to scrutinize the budget,  the expenditure program including identifying and assessing the beneficiaries and the impact of the programs in the budget,” he said.

“The last thing we’d want to see is to surrender all these powers to the executive and leave to the discretion of  the executive  how public taxes should be spent without Congress  exercising its constitutional  duty to review and approve it. But in the exercise of this constitutional duty, we will make our people part of the process and indeed we should take into serious account what our people are saying,” Drilon added.

Majority of senators, including Drilon and  Escudero,  have joined calls  for the  abolition of  PDAF after the Commission on Audit disclosed its  latest report, showing that  some legislators  have  exceeded their  pork  barrel  allocation from 2007 to 2009, and  millions of these  funds  allegedly  went to questionable  non-government organizations.

After Drilon’ statement, the committee then proceeded to hear the briefing  by the  Development Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC).

Among those invited were Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary  Arsenio Balisacan, Finace Secretary Cesar Pursima, Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Jacitno-Henares, and Customs Commissioner Rozzano Rufino Biazon.

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