Bicam hearing on 2014 budget open to public

Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/EDWIN BACASMAS

MANILA, Philippines—The bicameral conference committee hearing on the proposed P2.26-trillion 2014 national budget will be open to the public and even live streamed on the Internet on Tuesday, Sen. Francis Escudero said over the weekend.

The aim is “transparency and, hopefully, wider involvement of our people in the pre- and post-enactment processes of the budget,” Escudero told the Inquirer.

The bicam usually holds closed-door proceedings during which the lawmakers make additional budget realignments, more derisively called “insertions,” for their choice projects and programs.

Former Sen. Panfilo Lacson in a recent speech called the bicameral conference committee “the third and most powerful house of Congress, the one that can give a lawmaker as much as P1 billion in additional pork barrel allocations.”

“Quite frankly, the committee hearings and plenary debates on the 2014 General Appropriations Act were all public and live streamed but nobody really paid much attention or interest,” Escudero said.

“We will do the same for the bicam whether or not certain groups ask for it,” he said.

Escudero said that technical working groups from both the Senate and the House of Representatives had been meeting the past days to start reconciling the differences between the respective versions of the proposed budget.

Contentious inconsistencies and additional amendments that need to be debated upon will be taken up during the bicameral process, Escudero said.

He hoped it would take only two meetings of the panels of the bicam to come up with a unified version of the budget bill.

Regarding another budget measure, Escudero said the Senate and House panels had already agreed to extend the validity of the 2013 appropriation for calamity funds until the end of 2014. Some P12 billion from the executive branch’s unobligated funds had been set aside for this.

The bicameral report on the joint resolution on calamity funds is expected to be ratified by both chambers on Monday.

On the 2013 supplemental budget of P14.6 billion and funded by the unused pork barrel of lawmakers, Escudero said a bicam meeting may no longer be necessary.

The supplemental budget will be used in areas affected by Supertyphoon Yolanda and other natural and man-made disasters.

“I think the House will adopt the Senate version sans a bicam,” he said.