P424B pork in 2015 budget–Lacson
Inaccurate assertions
In a statement, the DBM said Lacson’s “doomsday assertions” on lump sums and the supposed resurrection of [the] DAP under the 2015 budget were inaccurate.
“A careful reading of the national budget would prove that quickly enough. While the General Appropriations Act may appear complex, it will very clearly show two things: That the supposed DAP provisions are not in the GAA and that there are fewer lump sums in the administration’s spending plan this year. As a matter of fact, 87 percent of the Special Purpose Funds under the 2015 Budget has already been disaggregated,” the DBM said.
Reach out to DBM
“Meanwhile, you will note that all remaining lump-sum items are funds whose specific purposes are impossible to determine in the planning process. For example: We cannot foretell where disasters will strike or what the extent of the potential damage might be, so the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund is necessarily a lump sum,” it said.
The DBM urged Lacson to reach out to the DBM if he had any misgivings about the national budget, “so we can prevent the misinterpretation of budget data.”
Reacting to a DBM statement, Lacson pointed out that Abad had said that the executive needed lump sums “by the nature of the budget items that they cannot foretell like calamities.”
The former senator said he agreed with Abad’s statement, but he added that the amounts were “staggering” to be intended only for calamities this year.
On the DBM statement that 87 percent of the Special Purpose Funds had already been disaggregated, Lacson said the lump-sum appropriations he was referring to were not for the SPF but for 11 out of the 21 major line agencies “and obviously not just for calamities for 2015, since the amounts, as I said, ‘are too much.’”
Choose leaders intelligently
The former senator said the country was facing “bad government” and that this would not happen if Filipinos chose their leaders intelligently.
“Let us choose our leaders who have shown the right example, and will therefore lead by the power and influence of good example,” he said.
He called on people in the government to “declare an honest-to-goodness, sustained, all-out war against corruption.”
Government website
Reacting to Lacson’s assertions, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda told reporters to check out the national government website gov.ph for the 2015 budget.
“The budget is also on Page 1226 of the Official Gazette… The special provisions are stated there,” he said.
Referring to 2015 budget allocations for housing, Lacierda said “the amount of P1.24 billion appropriated herein for the housing program for informal settler families (ISF) residing in danger areas within Metro Manila shall be used exclusively for the following projects with the corresponding amounts”:
— Construction of micro-medium rise buildings, P700 million;
— ISF for 26,367 target families, P476.6 million; and
— Administrative cost, P70,000.
Lacierda said the budget for housing of Senator Lacson was in the ISF.
Out of danger zones
“Remember there was a situation before where the informal settler families were in danger zones, those living along creeks and rivers? So the President emphasized the point that it’s not acceptable for the government to put them in harm’s way. Every time there’s a storm, every time there’s a flood, people are put in harm’s way. So we have to take them out of these danger zones,” he said.
“For that particular instruction, (Budget) Secretary Florencio Abad provided a budget. It’s there in the 2015 budget,” he said.
On Lacson’s questions about the P3.1-billion allocation for the Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan program for conflict-affected areas, “there’s a breakdown” of expenditures, Lacierda said.
“The locally funded projects Senator Lacson was referring to, everything is properly identified (also in gov.ph),” he added.
RELATED STORIES
Gov’t critics say ’15 budget filled with lump-sums
Gov’t can’t do away with lump sums—Palace
