House approves 2014 national budget on 2nd reading; lawmakers lose pork

House of Representatives. AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Congressmen may have lost their “pork,” but President Benigno Aquino III will get to keep his.

The House of Representatives on Saturday morning approved on second reading House Bill No. 2630 on next year’s P2.268-trillion national budget, despite concerns raised primarily by militant legislators about the enormous power the President wielded over state funds.

The voice vote held shortly before 2:30 a.m. came after 10 days and 116 hours of plenary debates. The third and final reading is set on Oct. 14, the day congressmen return from a two-week break.

The chamber formally “removed” P25.2 billion worth of Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), plus Vice President Jejomar Binay’s own P200-million allocation, in response to the public outrage over pork barrel.

The aggregate amount of P25.4 billion was then distributed to six key agencies, with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) getting the biggest share at P9.654 billion.

“In scrapping the PDAF, it was realigned to items in social services [and infrastructure],” Rep. Isidro Ungab, chairman of the committee on appropriations, told reporters before the budget bill was approved on second reading.

But under the new arrangement, congressmen was still asked to “propose” up to five infrastructure projects each to be implemented by the DPWH and with a budget ceiling of P24.5 million per legislator.

And while representatives agreed to let go of the PDAF as they knew it, they opted not to touch the President’s own lump-sum appropriations. ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio estimated the presidential pork barrel at P964 billion in next year’s budget.

Shortly before 2 a.m., Gabriela Rep. Luz Ilagan moved to transfer such appropriations to the “regular” budget of agencies. Ungab rejected the proposal, which was eventually defeated during plenary voting.

Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares earlier appealed to his colleagues “not to allow big lump sum [appropriations] in the budget of the President and off-budget items like the Malampaya Fund.”

“Let’s not allow that in the end, it would just be the President who would decide where all the money would go,” he said in Filipino.

“It’s about time we take the power of the purse back here in this Congress,” he added, arguing that after all congressional debates and deliberations, the President could ultimately “realign, disapprove, or withhold huge amounts.”

In a statement, the “other” minority  group headed by Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said it “cannot, in conscience, accept the retention of the  P1-trillion pork barrel of President Aquino in the 2014 budget without clear-cut guidelines and details on what and how will it be spent.”

“Unless the purpose is revealed, we don’t know where the money goes to,” Romualdez said.

Like the Makabayan bloc, the Romualdez group zeroed in on the “special purpose fund (SPF),” of which the P25.2-billion PDAF was only about 5.5 percent. At almost P450 billion, the SPF is about a fifth of the entire national budget.

“We cannot vote for a GAA [General Appropriations Act] which is just a parody of the ‘power of the purse’ of Congress. What we have is ‘the power of the coin purse’,” Romualdez said.

The Romualdez bloc called for the abolition of the entire SPF. Off-budget items, such as the P130-billion government share from the Malampaya Fund and the P12.5-billion Motor Vehicles Users’ Charge (MVUC), should be “integrated” in the GAA, the group demanded.

A five-man committee was formed to receive amendments, mostly specific infrastructure projects to itemize in the budget bill before it is considered for third reading.

RELATED STORY:

Solon proposes not bill, but marriage at House hearing