In the ongoing Senate plenary deliberations of the proposed 2021 budget, the Senators found out the government have at least P1 trillion in cash. This can be more than enough to fund the purchase of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines, boost the calamity funds, and finance programs to bring back on growth track the economy.
This is why perhaps President Rodrigo Duterte brags about “money is not a problem” because indeed the government’s cash position remains robust. However, it was for the wrong reasons because it appears government has been under spending amid the successive typhoon calamities and the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the middle of this government cash management issue, Senator Panfilo Lacson lambasted the “disparity” or the unfair split of allocation towards the infrastructure budget of the Congressmen. Lacson noted the billions and billions of pesos were being poured to obviously favored congressional districts. Lacson is the acknowledged expert by his peers in Congress when it comes to their annual scrutiny of the annual GAA bill.
In the middle of Lacson’s target is Davao City, the home city of President Duterte where one of his sons currently serves in one of its congressional districts.
Also included in Lacson’s budget eyes are Benguet, Albay and Abra while taking note other congressional districts have only a few millions to work with. In his scrutiny of the proposed P4.5 trillion GAA bill, Lacson noted the huge difference between the size of budgets in certain districts while other districts have to fend for themselves with less.
From the proposed 2021 GAA bill shows, Lacson cited, an urban district in Davao City has an infrastructure allocation of around P15.351 billion; in Albay P7.5 billion; in Benguet P7.9 billion; while Abra has P3.75 billion. Though he did not identify the respective congressmen, one of them included presidential son Rep. Paolo Duterte from the first district of Davao City. The others referred are those of Rep. Vincent Garcia (2nd district) and Rep. Isidro Ungab (3rd district).
In the 2nd district of Albay, it is veteran lawmaker Rep. Joey Salceda who chairs the House committee on ways and means. In fairness to Salceda – whose congressional district was devastated anew by two successive strong typhoons – deserves all the funding support from the national government. After all, it was Salceda who has diligently shepherded the passage into laws of key revenue-raising measures that have propped up the Philippine economy under the Duterte administration through the past four years.
The lone congressional district of Abra of Rep. Joseph Bernos also got the lion share along with that of Benguet currently under ACT-CIS party list representative Eric Yap as “caretaker” of the district. Yap incidentally continues to chair the powerful House committee on appropriations even after the most recent bitterly fought change of leadership at the House of Representatives.
Lacson calls it as the “horror roll” embedded in the proposed 2021 GAA bill that he vowed to dissect with fine-toothed comb. “I just want to point that out, why such big disparity? What’s in those districts that would merit those appropriations?” Lacson rhetorically asked.
In the large budget allocations in the districts of these congressmen included in the “horror roll,” Lacson confessed he is skeptical if these billions of pesos worth of infrastructure projects will actually push through. For one, Lacson questioned the so-called “absorptive capacity” of each of these congressional districts. “I cannot see how that particular engineering district could implement P15.351 billion of infrastructure projects,” Lacson pointed out.
Fellow Senators led by Senate president Vicente “Tito” Sotto III were alarmed by Lacson’s latest discoveries on the 2021 budget bill. Sotto echoed the Senate’s concern such skewed congressional allocations might trigger anew budget intramurals.
It was the same complaint that resulted to the re-enactment of the 2019 budget when the approval into law of 2020 GAA bill consequently got stalled in Congress last year. In the Speakership row not so long ago, this was the issue revived and raised against erstwhile House Speaker, Taguig Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano and his allies when the proposed 2021 GAA bill was submitted to the 18th Congress.
When he was our featured guest last month in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay, Sotto recalled it was Lacson’s diligent line-by-line perusal of the 2020 GAA bill that unearthed the so-called “parking” of allocations done by their House colleagues, mostly loaded in the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). But the biggest discovery of Lacson, Sotto cited, was the P8.8 billion found “parked” at the DPWH of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) budget provision.
When nobody claimed authorship of this “parked” allocation for the ARMM-DPWH, Sotto narrated to us, the Senators initiated the amendment of this provision during the bicameral conference committee to realign this to fund the “free tuition” for tertiary education in state universities and colleges (SUCs). This gave birth to the passage into law of the “free tuition” at SUCs, Sotto noted, and funding is now officially provided for in the annual national expenditure program of the government.
Cayetano’s successor, incumbent Speaker, Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco and his supporters namely, Negros Oriental Rep. Arnulfo Teves, 1-Pacman party list Rep. Mikee Romero and Oriental Mindoro Rep. Doy Leachon are now being questioned for the same unequal infrastructure allocations in the 2021 budget bill still being debated at the Senate plenary sessions. These were the same accusations they hurled against Cayetano last year.
Velasco remained quiet, however, on Lacson’s “horror roll” of House-approved congressional allocations. To his credit though, Velasco came through with the House-approved 2021 budget bill on time as promised to Senate president Sotto.
As many jaded ones would quip: “Same old, same old.”