‘Time running out on 2006 budget’

Time is fast running out on the still-to-be-enacted P1-trillion 2006 national budget.

The House of Representatives is scheduled to approve the money measure on third and final reading this week, four months behind schedule. The budget is the single most important piece of legislation that Congress is supposed to approve before the end of each calendar year.

Final approval comes just days before the House and the Senate go on their five-week Lenten break this weekend.

Session resumes on May 15 and will go on until June 9 before the legislature goes on its mandatory annual adjournment preparatory to its third and last regular session, which begins on July 24.

Between May 15 and June 9, which is just about a month, is the time given to the Senate to approve its own version of the budget. The bicameral conference on the measure would have to be squeezed within that short period.

While congressmen took their own sweet time in considering the appropriations bill, senators were conducting parallel hearings on the measure.

The Senate used such hearings to grill Cabinet members on controversial issues, including the "Hello, Garci" tapes containing alleged conversations on election fraud between President Arroyo and former election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, discontent in the Armed Forces and the P2.8-billion scam involving fertilizer and farm input funds.

The President initially prohibited Cabinet officials from attending Senate budget hearings and the confirmation process of the Commission on Appointments, but later relented.

If senators won’t confront the same officials with the same controversial issues when the Senate takes up the budget in plenary session, budget approval could be made faster. If the officials are grilled again, approval could be delayed.

If the Senate takes three weeks to pass the appropriations measure and bicameral conference entails one week, the budget could be approved before the mandatory adjournment on June 9. If not, the government would continue operating on the basis of the reenacted 2005 outlay.

Apparently with the tight schedule in mind, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said last week the Senate has no reason not to approve the 2006 appropriations bill.

Senators, including Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., have accused congressmen of deliberately delaying the approval of the 2006 budget so that the President can have the entire reenacted 2005 outlay as her entire pork barrel.

That would enable her to adequately fund her Charter change initiative, including the plebiscite for the ratification of proposed amendments, which, according to the Commission on Elections, would cost about P2.2 billion, they said.