House leaders see no VAT deadlock over ‘pork’ war

Leaders of the House of Representatives do not see a stalemate developing with senators on the value added tax (VAT) bill even in the wake of their bitter word war on the Senate’s approval of the congressmen’s version of the 2005 budget.

"The VAT bill should not be a casualty of this word war," Majority Leader Prospero Nograles said yesterday.

On Saturday, Senate President Franklin Drilon said he feared a deadlock on VAT if senators and congressmen do not set aside their "personal animosities" before going into a bicameral conference on the tax measure.

Nograles said there is "nothing personal" in last week’s exchange of harsh words between members of the two chambers of Congress over last Monday’s surprise Senate approval of the House version of this year’s budget.

"There is no anger or rancor in our heart. Trabaho lang ’yun," he said.

However, apparently just to be sure that VAT would not be a casualty of the Senate-House word war, Nograles and Deputy Speaker Gerry Salappudin proposed that senators and congressmen discuss their differences "in the presence of President Arroyo" in the next meeting of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac).

Their proposal is similar to the appeal over the weekend of some of their colleagues for the President to intervene in the rift between her allies, who dominate the two chambers.

An opposition congressman sees a hidden agenda in such an appeal: If Mrs. Arroyo steps in, she could be asked for more pork barrel allocations.

Salapuddin said despite the rift, senators and congressmen should work and agree on the VAT bill as soon as possible.

"The VAT and other tax bills are the only way government can raise new revenues to ease the deficit problem," he said.

Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, who chairs the economic affairs committee and sits in a small group advising the President on the economy, said he believes that despite the heat of the moment, reason will eventually prevail.

"Surely, we will rise to the demands of fiscal reform, knowing that our people’s chance for a better economy rests on it. Reason alone is enough, no need to wave the flag to get the Senate and the House to work on VAT," he said.

He was referring to suggestions from some of his colleagues that senators apologize to congressmen for the "dirt" the former heaped on the latter. To such calls, senators responded, "No way!"

The Senate’s surprise decision to adopt the House version of the budget prevented a bicameral conference from being convened and derailed the plan of congressmen to increase their pork barrel allocations in the bicam.

Nograles himself admitted on television that the House leadership had promised to work for restoring the P30 million that Malacañang had cut in the congressmen’s pork barrel funds.

As reduced, the pork barrel now allocated P120 million per senator and P40 million per House member.

A day before the surprise Senate vote on the budget, opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson told Makati businessmen that his colleagues had cut P1.3 billion from intelligence funds and realigned the amount to their own pork barrel.

Indeed, some privileged members of the smaller chamber had padded their funds from the reduction. One colleague of Lacson in the minority increased his allocations by P100 million.

Drilon, Lacson and Alfredo Lim have given up their allocation of P120 million each, or a total of P360 million, for this year. Seven others led by Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan, who had promised in a resolution that they would give up half of their funds, have not made good their promise.

Even as Nograles and some colleagues are calling for presidential intervention on the Senate-House word war, Drilon and Speaker Jose de Venecia are expected to meet this week to thresh things out.

The Speaker is expected to be back today from Belgium, where he attended a conference on federalism.