No more delays in budget passage — lawmaker

MANILA, Philippines — There should be no more delays in the passage of the national budget for next year in the incoming Congress, reelected Makati City Rep. Luis Campos said over the weekend.

“Budget delays are extremely harmful. We had that foul episode in Makati, wherein obstructionist city councilors nastily held hostage and then sabotaged the passage of this year’s local budget,” Campos, the husband of re-elected Makati City Mayor Abby Binay, said. He stressed there should be no repeat of the “costly 2019 budget crisis” if lawmakers are serious about helping the economy grow steadily.

“When the government sneezes, the economy catches a cold,” he pointed out.

“When the biggest consumer – the national government – is unable to spend dynamically due to a deferred budget, the entire economy suffers,” he said.

A budget measure should be passed by the first week of December, at the latest.

First-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 5.6 percent year-on-year, below the expected 6.0 percent. The slower growth was blamed on smaller public sector spending.

With the budget stalled, government spending rose by only 7.4 percent in the first quarter this year, down from the 13.6 percent growth in the first quarter of 2018.

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, for his part, wants the next Congress to have a “genuine minority leader” as several congressmen are reportedly vying for the post of speaker.

“A genuine minority leader can only be assured if he or she is neither a member or a partisan of the administration, not handpicked by the ruling majority,” he said.

“The minority leader must represent the genuine opposition in the House, articulate and pursue differing views, act as a courageous sentinel of the people’s rights and sentiments, and not be beholden to the administration nor an adjunct of the supermajority,” the veteran lawmaker said.

For Rep. Rodante Marcoleta of party-list 1-Sagip, the next speaker should be as workaholic as Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“It may be difficult to duplicate Speaker Arroyo’s feat in the legislative mill, but we need a similar leader who works 24/7 to ensure the enactment into laws of the President’s reform agenda,” Marcoleta said.

“It may be too early to discuss the race for the next speaker but we, the incumbents, have the duty to remind incoming congressmen, particularly the freshmen, of the need to select a House leader worthy of the job,” the senior deputy majority leader added.

“The 17th Congress has been supportive of the President’s reform agenda and we expect the speaker of the 18th Congress to work with us, possibly round the clock, to make the President’s vision for the country a reality,” he stressed.