House approves 2014 budget on final reading with realigned 'pork'

MANILA, Philippines - The House of Representatives has approved the proposed P2.268-trillion national budget for next year with lawmakers' Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) re-channeled to other agencies.

With a vote of 219-22, the House approved on third and final reading House Bill 2630 which appropriates the national government's budget in 2014, a television report said.

Under the House-approved 2014 budget, the P25.4-billion pork barrel of lawmakers and the Office of the Vice President have been deleted and realigned to specific items under some executive agencies.

Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, appropriations committee chairman, had said in a STAR report that the proposed PDAF for 2014 has been distributed to the agencies, which will implement projects in congressional districts without intervention from their elected representatives.

These agencies are the Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Labor and Employment, Department of Health, Commission on Higher Education, and Department of Education.

"The House leadership and majority of the Representatives of the people collectively decided to allocate instead these funds for the following priority programs, which will directly benefit the people," Ungab said last month in his sponsorship speech of the 2014 national budget.

Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco had complained that legislators only had an hour and a half to read the budget bill since they only received their copies on voting day. 

Now voting on the 1,107 page GAA even if we just saw it for d 1st time at 4pm today. How do you read 1,107 pages in 1 1/2 hours?

— Toby Tiangco (@TobyTiangco) October 22, 2013

GAA Main Book 1,107 pages, Volume 1. 1,154 pages, Volume 2. 964 pages Total 3,225 pages. We were given 1 1/2 hours to read.

— Toby Tiangco (@TobyTiangco) October 22, 2013