The House of Representatives on Friday night approved the proposed P3-trillion budget for 2016 on second and final reading with only a few changes and in spite of objections raised by the minority over the hefty lump-sum appropriations.
READ: House approves P3-T nat’l budget
By a vote of 230-20, the 291-strong chamber passed the General Appropriations Bill a day before Congress was to go on a three-week recess, complying with a letter from President Benigno Aquino III that certified the passage of the budget bill as urgent.
After a month of deliberations at the committee level and on the plenary floor, the approved bill was left virtually untouched from the original budget proposal submitted by the Department of Budget and Management to the House in August.
But members of the minority opposed the passage of the measure, noting the presence of lump sums, or discretionary funds, which they calculated to be P758 billion.
Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, who delivered the traditional “turno en contra” speech instead of Minority Leader Ronaldo Zamora, said the 2016 national budget was riddled with lump-sum appropriations, comprising almost a third of the budget.
“Why are there so many lump sums in the budget of agencies when they do not have the absorptive capacity to spend these?” he said.
“The Aquino administration is just perpetuating the pork barrel in the national budget and this will also continue in the supposed ‘daang matuwid’ (straight path),” he said, referring to the administration’s reform program.
Colmenares said lump sums amounted to P424 billion in 2015, and “ballooned” to P758.398 billion in the 2016 budget, “and this does not include other items in the Unprogrammed Fund and other Special Purpose Funds.”
“Malacañang is obviously skirting the Supreme Court ruling against the pork barrel,” he said.
Colmenares said it was found during interpellation on the Department of Public Works and Highways budget that the lump-sum appropriations were not only to be used for emergencies or calamities.
He cited a P6 billion lump sum that was not related to calamity at all, and covered instead a feasibility study, as well as “drainage projects and road networks worth billions.”
“The House should not pass this budget. We are representatives of the people, not of Malacañang or of any political party,” Colmenares said.