Will special session solve the flaws in 2021 budget?

Unconstitutional as it was, the railroaded approval Tuesday by majority congressmen of the 2021 national budget suited the Executive. Thus the presidential spokesman, a former peer, thanked them for it. The P4.5-trillion spending plan is flawed. Independent lawmakers were set to question its inaptness for the pandemic and economic slump. Closed-minded cabinet men wanted reprieve from such grilling. They got it, as congressmen, on say-so of Speaker Alan Cayetano, set aside all debates. "Aprub without thinking on second reading," they bayed. Third and final reading, whenever it comes, will be mere formality. No more poring over the dozens of agency budgets.

The flaws will multiply, however. After the forced second reading, Cayetano adjourned the House of Reps 11 days ahead of schedule. He then formed a "small committee" to accept individual congressmen's "amendments", aka "insertions", aka "for later release". Whatever else they call it, those are illegal pork barrels. Cayetano's appointees to the "small committee" are expert porkers. "Kumita committee", minority Rep. Lito Atienza, Buhay party, shakes his head.

Favorite milking cow is the Dept. of Public Works and Highways. From critical road and bridgeworks congressmen will slice funds left and right, for plowing to their districts. Multibillion-peso anti-flood projects will be contrived. Creeks will be "dredged", with no true measures of depth, width and length. From other usual victim-agencies will be plundered more funds for supposed pet projects.  The money goes straight to the "honorables"' pockets. In October next year begins the election season with candidacy filings.

Cayetano's adjournment is till Nov. 16. Only then or shortly thereafter will be the third reading -- containing all the pork slabs. With gusto majority congressmen will vote "yea". Cayetano meanwhile will forgo the gentleman's agreement to hand over the Speakership to Rep. Lord Velasco. He will still hold the top post on his birthday, Oct. 28.

Senators resent the tight calendar left for them to finish the budget. Intending to scrap the congressmen's pork as in previous years, they will need time to scrutinize. Their plenary debates on the budget normally take two weeks. After which, they haggle for a week with congressmen to reconcile respective bill versions. Both chambers then reconvene to ratify the final draft. Including tedious printing, they need to finish by Dec. 18, to recess for the Christmas/New Year holidays. If things don't work out, the previous year's budget automatically extends to the next. That would be fatal, since the 2020 budget, enacted in early Dec. 2019, contained no provisions against COVID-19 and for economic recovery.

Cayetano's solution to that is for senators simply to okay his House version, sight unseen. Siding with him, the Malacañang squawk box quarreled with senators who foresaw certain reenactment of the 2020 budget.

President Rody Duterte saw through the ploys. Pork-barrel realignments will upset the Executive's 2021 programs. Not the House of Reps but his administration will go down in history as a flop. He also felt betrayed by Cayetano's cancellation of the gentleman's agreement he helped forge, Velasco publicized. Thursday night Duterte told the two on national-tv to settle their Speakership squabble, or else. Standing at attention behind him were his appointee-generals to the Cabinet. Friday he issued a proclamation for Congress to reconvene in a four-day special session starting tomorrow solely to rework next year's budget.

The special session can begin to correct the flaws:

• Itemize the P396 billion in "patently illegal" lump sums in the DPWH budget, Senator Panfilo Lacson demands. That includes infrastructures that DPWH will build for other departments.

• Explain P136 billion rehashed items from this year's budget, Lacson adds. Those funds should have been spent by now and works completed.

• P2.25 billion for confidential expenses plus P2.25 billion for intelligence is "excessive" for the Office of the President, Lacson says.

• Including subsidies for Philhealth insurance, the Dept. of Health budget is P50 billion lower than last year's -- unresponsive to the C-19 crisis. "Parang walang pandemic," Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto and Minority Leader Franklin Drilon say.

• Funding for all vaccines -- measles, polio, TB, and a dozen more -- is only P2.5 billion. Yet at P1,000 apiece, P60 billion is needed to inoculate 60% of or at least 60 million Filipinos, against the deadly coronavirus, Recto adds.

• There is no "ayuda" in the Dept. of Social Welfare and Development budget for 18 million families, Drilon notes.

• Why is there no manhunt for the missing former Comelec chairman whose wife exposed to be on the payroll of the Venezuelan voting machine supplier, Smartmatic? Cong. Atienza wants Comelec to explain.

• Are the two Mega Manila water concessionaires being compelled to build sewage treatment plants? Atienza will ask this of the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources.

• Why is the Dept. of Transportation awarding the P107-billion expansion of the Manila International Airport to an undercapitalized company with only one-third of the MIA Authority's assets? This breaches the Build-Operate-Transfer Law, Rep. Jericho Nograles, Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta, says.

• Why does Philhealth project P96 billion deficit next year, and only five-percent collection of members' dues, Marikina Rep. Stella Luz Quimbo asks.

• Why does Philhealth, essentially an insurance company, have no provision for actuarial research, Quezon Rep. Angelina Tan reveals.

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