Senate, House vow to pass budget before Congress adjourns

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate and House of Representatives vowed last night to pass the proposed P3.7-trillion national budget next week as both chambers continue to struggle to come up with a reconciled version of the measure.

The commitment came after the bicameral conference committee on the 2019 General Appropriations Bill (GAB) came close to a deadlock yesterday as Senate President Vicente Sotto III wanted to pull out the chamber’s version of the GAB from bicameral deliberations and let the government continue operating under a reenacted budget.

Sotto told reporters he was “sick and tired” of repeated allegations of pork insertions in the GAB so to settle the matter, the Senate would just withdraw its version of the money measure, dispensing with the need for the committee to continue its work.

The committee, composed of delegates from both chambers of Congress, resumed meeting last night in Makati City where Sen. Loren Legarda, chairperson of the Senate finance committee, relayed Sotto’s plan.

Addressing the panel, Legarda said since the body is still hammering out a final version of the GAB, the government would continue to operate on the reenacted 2018 General Appropriations Act while ensuring funding for the scheduled salary increase of government workers, including uniformed personnel this year and the coming May elections.

The Department of Budget and Management, she reported to the committee, assured P10 billion for the polls to be augmented by the 2018 GAA’s Contingency Fund while the fourth tranche of the Salary Standardization Law would be sourced from the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund in the reenacted budget.

“Thus, even if the bicameral conference meeting goes on for another week because session adjourns next week, we can actually go on until Friday, Feb. 8, which I am willing to do and even willing to go beyond for a special session if it warrants, these concerns will already be taken cared of separately,” Legarda said.

The last meeting of the bicameral panel centered on how the Senate and the House reconcile their amendments. The committee meeting was ongoing as of press time.

 The Senate is standing by its P190 billion worth of changes and realignments in the GAB but the House said it can only revise provisions up to P50 billion.

Sotto’s push came a week before Congress is set to adjourn to give way to the 90-day electoral campaign period even as some leaders of the Senate and the House continue to trade allegations of billions of pesos in suspicious insertions in the GAB.

He asked Legarda to withdraw the Senate’s version of the GAB from the bicameral conference committee, which is tasked to resolve differing provisions of the versions of the proposed budgets passed by both chambers of Congress.

“We will have to stay with a reenacted budget for 2019. With that, I think, all the issues about corruption, pork barrel, insertions and all, will be erased. Let’s just have a reenacted budget so that all these issues will end,” Sotto told reporters earlier in the day.

The government is currently running on the 2018 General Appropriations Act (GAA) by operation of the Constitution after Congress failed to approve the GAB in December last year.

Asked about the Senate’s stance last year against the government continuing to operate on last year’s budget, Sotto said: “What do we prefer? A reenacted budget or a budget wherein there are so many allegations?”

He noted reports reaching him claimed that the House contingent in the bicameral committee took a “hardball stance and finding all sorts of things against the Senate.”

Sotto said he was willing the sacrifice the P190 billion, which includes funding for the building of new health facilities and other urgent projects, if only to end the allegations.

 He said there was no basis to fears that having a reenacted budget would mean there would be no funding for the coming May national and local elections.

Legarda earlier told reporters that the technical staff of both chambers had just finished going through the disagreeing provisions of their respective versions of the budget and she intended to “go through each provision and corresponding recommendation line-by-line” with her House counterparts.

Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr., chairman of the appropriations committee of the House and head of the House contingent to the bicameral body, told reporters that both chambers are determined to give the government a new spending authority for this year.

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said a reenacted budget will not be good for the job creation and would stall the growth of the economy.

“Build, Build, Build will suffer,” Recto said, referring to the administration’s ambitious infrastructure program.

Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito regretted the development, saying a reenacted budget would mean the funding for the health facilities of the Department of Health that he pushed would be gone.

“It will be sad that all the effort to improve our government services will all be wasted,” Ejercito told reporters.

Stalemate

The failure of 23 senators to itemize their proposed P190-billion pork barrel allocations has apparently stood in the way of Congress’ approval of the 2019 national budget now being hammered out in the bicameral conference.

Andaya and Rep. Anthony Bravo of party-list Coop-NATCCO have both declared so. 

“So far, the proposed amendments of the Senate are all in general terms, shall we say lump sums. So we have to get the details of their amendments,” Andaya said as he defended the 292-member House’s P51- billion allocation. –  With Delon Porcalla, Jess Diaz, Alexis Romero