‘Senate exec admits P80-billion budget realignment’

MANILA, Philippines — The chairman of the House of Representatives committee on appropriations continued his word war with senators on alleged pork barrel fund insertions in the still-to-be-enacted national budget for this year.

“The Senate has finally admitted that the chamber slashed more than P80 billion of the 2019 budget from President Duterte’s major infrastructure projects and social programs,” Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. said yesterday. 

“The Senate, through its LBRMO chief, also confirmed that the budget cuts were realigned to fund the senators’ pet projects and programs,” he said.

He was referring to Yolanda Doblon, who heads the Senate’s legislative budget research and monitoring office.     

“The LBRMO chief, however, stopped short of admitting that the Senate submitted the realignments to the House of Representatives bit by bit from Feb. 11 to March 8, several days after both chambers ratified the bicameral conference report on Feb. 8,” Andaya said.

He said he could understand that Doblon “cannot contradict earlier statements made by the Senate president.”

Senate President Vicente Sotto III has consistently asserted that his chamber did not touch the proposed budget after senators and congressmen ratified the bicameral conference committee report.

On the other hand, he claimed that the House made post-ratification “internal realignments” amounting to P95 billion, including P75 billion in funds allocated to the Department of Public Works and Highways, in violation of the Constitution.

In Lingayen where he attended Pangasinan Day yesterday, Sotto expressed confidence President Duterte will veto or scrap these “unconstitutional” changes in the 2019 budget bill.

“We’re actually talking about two to three percent of the budget and this is precisely what we sent to him. We sent the entire copy of what we felt were not constitutionally correct as far as the submission of the budget is concerned,” Sotto said.

He said the allegation that it was the senators who made the cuts in the budget was “completely false.”

“If he does not veto, I’m sure someone will bring it to the attention of the Supreme Court, someone will file a petition in the Supreme Court questioning those… unconstitutional realignments,” Sotto said.

According to Andaya’s Camarines Sur colleague Luis Raymund Villafuerte, the realigned funds were taken from up to 80 legislative districts by the House leadership and given to favored members.

Andaya said he could not understand Doblon’s statement that the senators’ realignments “were already made known to the public.” 

In her statement, Doblon said senators’ budget amendments were made public since Sen. Loren Legarda, who chairs the Senate finance committee, “read during the approval of the bicameral conference committee report the explanatory notes which outlined the amendments to the general appropriations bill.”

Not compromised

The Duterte administration’s priority projects, including those under the Build Build Build program, have not been compromised in the proposed P3.7-trillion General Appropriations Bill (GAB) for 2019 as Congress approved more than half a trillion in funding for the DPWH.

According to a statement from the Senate’s LBRMO, the P549.390 billion in new appropriations for the DPWH was P4.869 billion higher than what Malacañang sought from Congress.

LBRMO data showed the enrolled GAB transmitted to the President reflected an increase of P32.923 billion compared to the P516.467 billion approved by the House.  – With Eva Visperas, Cesar Ramirez