SENATE President Franklin Drilon on Monday said the chamber will scrutinize the last national budget under the Aquino administration even as he assured the public that the pork barrel will have no place in the annual allocation.
Nineteen senators attended the opening of the third and last regular session of the 16th Congress.
Drilon called on the lawmakers to brush aside political differences and work together for the people, especially since as election year draws near.
“We are racing against time. We must set aside political interests and think solutions to the nation’s pressing problems. Let us remind ourselves that we are here to serve the people, and not special interest groups,” he said.
In his speech, Drilon said the Senate will scrutinize the proposed P3-trillion national budget and pass it “on time as we have done in the past five years so that the government would not operate on a reenacted budget.”
He said the administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had operated on a reenacted budget which in turn, “converted the entire national budget into a single lump sum appropriation.”
Drilon said Congress had done away with the pork barrel system which the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional last year.
“We assure the people that the pork barrel system is a thing of the past,” Drilon also said.
Drilon’s statement came after Sen. Panfilo Lacson announced his move to question before the Supreme Court the lump sum appropriations in the 2015 national budget, which his team had found to amount to P420 billion in 11 of 21 major line agencies.
Lacson had said lump sum appropriations were prone to abuse and corruption.
But Drilon told reporters that not all lump sum appropriations in the national budget was illegal. He cited the miscellaneous benefit personnel fund (MBPF) in lump sum funds which, according to the Palace, responds to obligations to retiring government employees.
“So how can we itemize this?” Drilon said.
He also cited Congress’ passage of the Sandiganbayan law that created two more divisions to help in the backlog of antigraft cases, saying these two divisions would be created by the appointment of personnel. The appropriation for this came from the MBPF.
Drilon said lawmakers can identify projects for government funding this is now done during the budget deliberations under the high court ruling. After the budget had been passed, this would be considered pork barrel.
Drilon said the Senate will also pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) consistent with the Constitution. He said Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told him he would pass the committee report on Aug. 3.
The Senate will also pass the Customs and Tariff Modernization Act, the Tax Incentives Monitoring and Transparency Act, the Department of Information and Communications Technology and a modernized Pagasa.