Lacson leaves it to Duterte to purge budget of pork

It’s up to President Rodrigo Duterte to purge his P3.8-trillion national budget for 2019 of pork, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said on Wednesday.

Lacson urged the President on Tuesday to use his veto power to rid the budget of billions of pesos in pork that “incorrigibly insatiable” congressmen insisted on embedding in the draft spending bill.

There was no response from the President as of Wednesday.

A Senate-House conference committee was working against the clock to hammer out a final version of the budget bill whose approval last year was delayed by a quarrel over pork and the addition of P75 billion in unrequested funds to the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways.

P160M for each congressman

Lacson discovered P160 million in pork for every member of the House of Representatives, which he did not believe the congressmen would give up.

Senators added to the problem, introducing P23 billion in “individual amendments” to the budget proposal.

Lacson said he would defer to the President’s discretion on how to clean up the budget.

Asked if he would submit to the President a list showing the pork in the spending bill, Lacson said: “They are already there. The details are there.”

Passion, frustration

“That’s his sole authority under the Constitution. It’s not for me to barge in there (Malacañang) and advise him to veto [the pork allotments],” he said.

“I will not do that. But there’s really pork there. It’s up to the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) and Malacañang to determine,” he added.

“Call it passion, exasperation, frustration [and] even desperation. I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure that the Filipino taxpayers’ hard-earned money will not flow into the deep pockets of the corrupt few,” Lacson said.

Sotto support

Senate President Vicente Sotto III voiced support for Lacson’s suggestion, saying the President should remove pork from the expenditure bill if it could be proved that the appropriations were illegal.

“If it is necessary and it’s clear that they’re pork, then why not? It should be vetoed,” Sotto said.

“At this point, we’re really not sure if they are pork or not. What we know in the Senate are the institutional amendments,” he said.

Sotto said the senators would meet on Friday to ratify the final version of the conference committee report that Sen. Loren Legarda, chair of the Senate finance committee, and her counterpart in the House, Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr., prepared for its approval.

Both the Senate and the House concluded their regular session on Wednesday and broke up for a three-month recess.

Legarda on Monday said she was expecting the draft report to be submitted to the Senate on Wednesday, in time for ratification on Friday.

Initial conference committee

But Lacson said the Senate had yet to receive the initial conference committee report as of 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

According to Lacson, he and his colleagues were firm in their stand that they must closely examine the draft to check if the questionable items in the proposed budget had already been deleted before signing the document.

“That’s my manifestation. We cannot treat it as business as usual, that we will just sign the bicameral report without reading it,” he said.

“We want to see first if what we had discussed was followed,” he added.