2023 Budget: Funding billions of lump sums
When you insert too many lump sums in the National Appropriation Act, you are hiding the details of your intended expenditures from the taxpayers. You are then depriving the Filipino people of the opportunity to know how the public funds are going to be spent. And you shall deny the COA the opportunity to check on the fidelity of executive agencies in spending the government fund. These questions should be addressed to both the House and the Senate.
It is a good thing that we have in the House a Makabayan Bloc, or whatever remains of them, and in the Senate, we have a lonely voice from the gentleman from Cagayan de Oro City, former Senate president Aquilino Pimentel III, otherwise the masses would be kept blind and deaf to how the trapos in both chambers are making magic out of the national budget.
Senate minority leader Koko Pimentel III, a true son of the late Nene Pimentel Jr. has called out the senate and the House leadership concerning the mysterious amounts ranging from P480 billion (with a B) to P1 trillion which are being inserted as lump sums in various allocations. He said that these should be realigned to fund programs on food security and disaster prevention and controlling inflation.
Senator Pimentel, the only Bar topnotcher now in the Philippine Senate, has declared that these lump sums allocations are unconstitutional. This scheme would be a virtual surrender by both the Senate and the House of the Congressional power over the purse to the very powerful executive. He pointed out that the Office of the President has an intelligence fund of no less than P4.5 billion. The vice president too, both as such and as DepEd has too much intelligence funds.
What are they going to do with these funds? Well, it is confidential. Are they going to duplicate the intelligence operations of the police, the armed forces and the NBI, and the PDEA? Well, that is confidential too? What happened to transparency in good governance?
It has been reported that about P206.5 billion is allocated for "ayuda" out of the proposed P5.268 trillion national appropriation for 2023. About P2.5 billion has been earmarked as fuel subsidies for suffering transport drivers who are gasping for breath vis-a-vis the skyrocketing prices of gasoline and crude oil. The Department of Agriculture is allocated no less than P1 billion in fuel assistance for farmers and fishermen. They are assuming that the farmers own their own vehicles. Some P22.39 billion will go to the DOH for its Medical Assistance for Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients. The DSWD's 4 P’s or the Pantawid Program will get no less than P115.6 billion. The indigent seniors will also be allocated P25.3 billion.
The actual implementation of these programs, however, may be tainted with political and partisan biases. Qualified beneficiaries who are identified with the opposition are often denied or delayed with too much red tape and bureaucratic inanities. That is why we need to listen to such voices as that of Senator Koko so that we, the vigilant citizens, can help safeguard the use of public funds. Pimentel also proposed that the P10 billion allocated to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict be channeled to "growth equity fund".
Also, we should closely watch why there was a P500-million lump sum allocated to the DPWH. Why not specify where this big sum will be spent? Don't tell me this is also an intelligence fund?
Eternal vigilance, it is often said, is the price of liberty. If we do not watch out, some smart guys are going to make money out of government funds again. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. If we do not call this out, who will? If we do not do it now, when? The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind. We better wake up or we are going to get blown away again.
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