House may enact supplemental budget for DAP projects

AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–The House of Representatives may enact a supplemental budget to cover the costs of government projects that have been orphaned by the Supreme Court decision striking down the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

Members of the ruling Liberal Party in the House are studying the “corrective measure” as a way to bankroll DAP-funded projects in various stages of completion, and whose funding is now in question, Ifugao Rep. Teodoro Baguilat Jr. said on Wednesday.

In the Senate, the Supreme Court decision is understood to have cleared the way for the senators to exercise the legislative power of the purse by writing projects directly into the budget, a process called straight earmarking but locally known as congressional insertion.

Sen. Pia Cayetano told reporters on Wednesday that she hoped the Supreme Court decision would bring a “big change.”

“I hope we [can now] use our powers to direct programs that we feel are valid, and the power of the President will come in by way of [veto],” Cayetano said.

The DAP was a stimulus fund that Malacañang put together from the savings of government agencies to finance spade-ready projects that would generate jobs and income and push factory activity.

Corrective to slow spending

It was a corrective to the government’s slow spending at the start of the Aquino administration, but Malacañang kept it under wraps and the program’s existence became known only after one of its beneficiaries, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, blew the whistle in a privilege speech on Sept. 25 last year as he tried to fight off accusations of plunder over the P10-billion pork barrel scam.

Opponents of the DAP, seeing the program as a pork barrel, questioned its legality in the Supreme Court. They won the case on Tuesday last week.

Ruling against Malacañang, the Supreme Court declared the DAP unconstitutional, as it violated the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative and usurped Congress’ power of the purse.

The Palace, which scrapped the DAP after its exposure, insists it has done nothing wrong. It has not said, however, whether it will appeal the ruling or what it will do to complete the projects whose funding has been stopped as a result of the program’s demise.

Full list of projects

The Liberals in the House are doing the thinking for the Palace but to solve the problem, Baguilat said, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) must release a full list of DAP-funded projects, many of which the lawmakers did not even know were financed from the voided stimulus program.

“Now we’re starting to find out because the projects are not being paid for. District engineers are now writing [to us] that these are the projects not being settled. That’s why we want all the data,” Baguilat said.

He cited the case of a bridge that was destroyed at the height of Typhoon “Pedring” in 2011. The funds for the repair of the bridge, as it turned out, came from the DAP.

“Well and good, because it has been constructed, but that project has not been paid for,” he said.

Favored by Liberals

A supplemental budget has been talked about favorably among the House Liberals, “but this has to be discussed with the committee on appropriations,” Baguilat said.

Committee on appropriations chair Isidro Ungab, the representative from Davao City, said passage of a supplemental budget was one option, “as we have to take into consideration the predicament of contractors or suppliers who started working on [the] projects in good faith.”

He said the Supreme Court decision did not actually rule that DAP-funded projects were deplorable or damaging to the beneficiaries.

Another option, Ungab said, is to seek clarification from the Supreme Court on how to pay for completed DAP projects.

Good DAP-funded projects

Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, vice chair of the appropriations committee, said he thought a supplemental budget was the best option to keep good DAP-funded projects from going to waste.

Among such projects are rural electrification and vital infrastructure, he said.

But DAP-funded projects tainted with graft and corruption, especially those that went through nongovernment organizations, should be excluded from the supplemental budget, Evardone said.

Funding could be sourced from savings from the efficient implementation of projects, “or the funds intended for DAP projects can also be realigned,” he said.

“Congress should exercise its constitutional power to appropriate funds,” he said.

Such a budget can be put together when funds are actually available as certified by the national treasurer; when new revenue sources can support additional budgetary requirements, and when it is urgently needed, such as in times of public calamity.

“Technically, lawyers in the [Liberal Party] are saying that nothing in the Supreme Court ruling prevents Congress from actually using savings,” Baguilat said. “That’s allowed as long as there is an appropriation.”

Used to lobby

Sen. Sonny Angara said lawmakers were likely to be more involved in the budget process following the Supreme Court’s DAP ruling, and if their projects would be specified in the budget, there would be a greater chance for the public to see if public funds were properly used.

“The legislators may be more active as a result of the ruling, which in a sense reinstated the power of appropriation. [We hope], these developments will lead to greater transparency and accountability in government budgeting,” Angara said.

He noted that before, lawmakers lobbied the administration for funding for their projects and for their districts, but the process was unknown to the public.

Going by the corruption scandals, “budgetary lump sums” and “unaccountable discretion” lead to graft and corruption, he said.

With the DAP ruling prohibiting cross-border transfer of savings, Angara said he expected that the executive’s budget proposal would be more precise.

He said he also expected the executive to be more precise in target setting, in view of the court’s ruling that unprogrammed funds could not be spent until there was a certified surplus of government revenue over the targets.

Congress is expected to tackle Malacañang’s 2015 budget proposal soon after the President’s State of the Nation Address later this month.

The 2015 budget would no longer have the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), which the Supreme Court struck down last year amid the pork barrel scandal allegedly masterminded by businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.