No ‘pork’ in 2015 budget—Belmonte

MANILA, Philippines–Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. on Wednesday refuted Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s claim that the proposed 2015 national budget is riddled with pork barrel or lump sum funds declared illegal by the Supreme Court.

Belmonte said in an interview that Congress was compliant with the Supreme Court decision on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) even as lawmakers prepared a list of their pet projects to be included in the budget.

Belmonte said the high court only disallowed the usual post-budget identification of projects that would be funded under lump sum appropriations.

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

“There’s a lot of projects of congressmen that are there. But these are listed. That’s the word. Listed. What the Supreme Court is against in their decision is that lump sum without any indication what they’re going to be used for,” Belmonte said.

Belmonte said the high court did not prohibit the practice of lawmakers endorsing projects and itemizing these before the budget is drafted. What the high court disallowed is the endorsement of projects after the budget is approved.

“The SC itself said there’s absolutely nothing wrong. It is the function and duty of Congress to itemize projects. As you can see from our former two-volume budget, we now have a six-volume budget that’s full of itemization,” Belmonte said.

The Speaker made the statement as Senator Santiago in a privilege speech said the lower House distributed slips of paper to representatives asking them to list their pet projects that would be funded in the budget.

Santiago said this smacked of “pork barrelism,” especially now that the Supreme Court scrapped the PDAF or pork barrel at the height of the public outcry over the alleged massive corruption that resulted in the detention of three senators and accused mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.

“Let’s just assume for the sake of argument that this is true. Why would anyone distribute slips of paper and ask representatives in the Lower House to write down what projects they desire for their districts? That’s the very essence of pork barrelism,” Santiago said in the news briefing.

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