Lawmakers deny P60-million ‘pork barrel’ for each House member

MANILA, Philippines — Senators have their own pork barrel funds in the proposed P3.757-trillion 2019 national budget, congressmen belonging to the minority bloc in the House of Representatives said yesterday.

They made the statement in response to an assertion made by Sen. Panfilo Lacson that Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has allocated P60 million to each House member in next year’s budget.

Minority Leader Danilo Suarez and his two assistants, Reps. Alfredo Garbin Jr. of Ako Bicol and John Bertiz of ACTS-OFW, denied that the Speaker made the allocation.

Suarez said Lacson must be referring to project funding requests from their constituents that they forward to implementing agencies like the Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Education and Department of Health.

The requests could total billions and it would be up to the agencies to accommodate them, Suarez said.

Garbin admitted that he made requests for funding “amounting to more than P60 million.”

“I am not sure if all of those were granted. I know that senators made similar proposals for funding projects. We no longer call these as pork barrel, we call them as initiatives to attend to the requests and concerns of our constituents,” he said.

He said in the past, there were senators who sought funding of as much as P200 million for projects.

He noted that the old Priority Development Assistance Fund, which the Supreme Court stuck down as unconstitutional in November 2013, allocated P70 million for each House member and P200 million for each senator.