Congress hikes own budget by P1.8 billion

MANILA, Philippines - Senators and congressmen have dipped their fingers into the proverbial cookie jar.

Unfortunately for the Filipino taxpayer, the cookie jar is the proposed P1.541-trillion 2010 national budget.

The House of Representatives and the Senate have given themselves an additional P1.8 billion for next year, increasing their combined budget to P8.8 billion.

In contrast, they did not give even a centavo in additional money to the offices of the President and the Vice President. The Office of the President proposes the annual national budget to Congress.

In her budget proposal, President Arroyo recommended P7.018 billion in total funds for the House and the Senate.

In their version of the 2010 budget, congressmen increased the money for Congress by P954 million to P7.972 billion.

When the House version was considered in the bicameral conference committee, it was the turn of the Senate to add P857 million more, for a total of P1.811 billion.

Senate finance committee chairman Edgardo Angara and his House counterpart Quirino Rep. Junie Cua jointly headed the conference committee.

Funds for Mrs. Arroyo’s office and the office of Vice President Noli de Castro remained at the levels she proposed – P4.259 billion and P185 million, respectively.

The additional funds senators and congressmen gave themselves came from money that Filipinos would pay next year for the nation’s P4.3-trillion debt.

The Angara-Cua committee reduced debt payment funds by a total of P64.613 billion, diverting most of it to the congressional pork barrel.

The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) received from the committee the biggest augmentation of P30.3 billion, nearly half the amount cut from proposed debt payments.

The DPWH is the agency where most of the pork barrel funds of lawmakers are hidden.

Several other agencies received big increases. The Department of Education and 112 state universities and colleges throughout the country got a combined increase of P4.9 billion, less than a sixth of what the Angara-Cua panel gave the DPWH in additional money.

The only agency that suffered a net reduction is the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), for which Mrs. Arroyo proposed P4.030 billion.

The House increased NEDA funds by P20 million but the conference committee took away P36 million for a net reduction of P16 million.

Ironically, the agency used to be headed by a former senator, Ralph Recto, who had warned the President that next year’s budget deficit could swell to the highest ever level of P400 billion if she does not veto the huge P64.6-billion reduction in debt payments.

The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), where the Ampatuans used to lord it over and where the Nov. 23 mass slaughter of 57 civilians took place, got better treatment from lawmakers than Recto’s former agency.

ARMM’s budget jumped from P9.263 billion to P9.285 billion, or an increase of P22 million.

Lawmakers approved the Angara-Cua committee report on the final shape of the budget on Dec. 18, their last session day, before going on a month-long Christmas vacation.

The House approved it even without a quorum, though the chamber’s journal of proceedings officially shows the presence of a quorum.

The session that day was a continuation of a previous one during which most of the members responded to the roll call.

Fewer than 30 congressmen voted to ratify the report even without seeing it. They were not given nor did they ask for copies of the document.

As it turned out, based on a copy of the report The STAR has obtained from House sources, only Angara signed it for the Senate, while 12 congressmen signed it for the House.

It was not a valid report and its ratification was therefore not valid, according to Sen. Francis Escudero.

He said the document should have been signed by a majority of the eight senators named in the conference committee, and a majority of the 17 congressmen who were members of the panel.