|
IT is so
silent you can hear, as the cliché goes, a pin drop.
We refer
to the deafening silence from majority of lawmakers—who
must now be busily preparing for their six-week
vacation, or are well into it—on the reckless disregard
by the Executive of Congress’s constitutionally ordained
prerogative over the public purse, as seen in the
spending of P2 billion in public funds for a dubious
one-time dole for electricity users.
Ironically, the only ones making “noise” are a
civil-society activist, a former budget secretary and a
few lawmakers. The rest are either too busy or are tuned
out or—worse—see the anomaly but are scared of being
tarred as “antipoor” simply because “they oppose
subsidies.”
That is
the Palace’s obvious, and expected, line: People
everywhere are suffering the impact of a relentless rise
in prices, especially gas and food, and the government
must do anything—whatever it takes—to make them feel
better. And anyone who criticizes the Executive’s
response is a villain.
It is
dangerous to allow this thinking to go on and on in the
next six weeks that Congress is not in session, not so
much because those stupid lawmakers enjoying their
vacation with nary a care in the world will lose
political brownie points to a peripatetic President and
her allies busily distributing all sorts of goodies
across the land.
To allow
this scenario to continue is perilous for the people’s
general well-being because it institutionalizes a
terrible misalignment of the budget process, a key
pillar of a democratically functioning government and an
embodiment of the Constitution’s spirit of checks and
balance that assigns key mandates uniquely to each
branch—hence, there are prerogatives that only the
Executive may hold; ditto with the judiciary; and for
Congress, the power of the purse.
But
because, by going into its scheduled recess without
taking steps to press the other branch (Palace) to
undertake relief measures for the people that are within
the legal framework, Congress effectively washed its
hands of the task and seemed to signal to the Executive
to “just do it your way.”
And what
a way it is turning out to be. At Monday morning’s
Karambola over dwIZ, program hosts, led by Makati
Rep. Teddyboy Locsin Jr., interviewed Senate Minority
Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. about his statement, in the
BusinessMirror’s banner story, warning of the
constitutionality of the Palace move to just throw funds
at any subsidy it fancied, all supposedly from the “VAT
[value-added tax] windfall”—meaning, the additional
collections that the state incurred as oil prices kept
soaring, thus lifting proportionately the VAT on
petroleum products.
Pimentel
reiterated the simple, but fundamental concern raised by
Prof. Leonor Briones, former national treasurer and this
paper’s columnist: Simply dipping into a supposed “VAT
windfall” kitty for purposes not stated in the General
Appropriations Act for 2008 skates on thin
constitutional ice.
“We
expect to be excoriated in the public eye by the Palace;
they will call us antipoor for opposing subsidies. But
it is clear that we are not opposing the grant of
relief, per se; we want the government to state clearly
the source of these billions and justify dipping into
them,” said Pimentel.
Briones
had clearly explained why any subsidy cannot just dip at
whim into any imagined “windfall” kitty by detailing the
process by which funds legally provided for in the
General Appropriations Act are programmed for release.
At the start of the year, the Treasury and budget
officials, guided by the budget law, know roughly how
much money is coming in and will go out.
The
Treasury has a cash program that strictly follows a
schedule of payments; it dares not deviate from this
because it will derail the entire government cash
management. If there are releases or unusual movements
that are not in the cash program or the
Congress-approved budget, that will surface, and the
Treasury’s cash flow will be disrupted. If there’s
anything out of schedule that must be provided for, the
clearance to Treasury must come from the budget
department.
They
(Executive officials) cannot simply decide, one day,
that they want to spend a few billions for the poor
because times are hard and there’s extra money
anyway—the bonanza from VAT collections, since the
revenue part of the year’s budget was premised on lower
crude prices in the world market.
Whatever
additional collections there are must be covered by an
appropriations by Congress. Professor Briones asks a
hypothetical question to explain the ridiculousness of
simply allowing the Executive to dip its hands into
anything it deems “extra”—if oil prices suddenly plunge
toward the end of the year, what happens to a government
that will suddenly find its collections declining again?
Besides,
notes Briones, there are clearly defined rules and
procedures for showing there is an excess in revenue,
and these cannot be simply spent on the specious claim
that they comprise “additionality” over the
Congress-approved budget.
Moreover, as an ANC report featured Sunday night, the
government’s frontline agencies themselves are reeling
from the impact of the oil-price hikes, and no matter
how many times they may be ordered by the Palace to
conserve energy and fuel, the point is that the services
they offer face serious disruptions, which also affect
the poor for whom the Palace subsidy gang bleeds.
The
Bureau of Fire Protection can barely afford the gas for
its firetrucks; ditto the ambulances and other vehicles
so vital to the work of such line agencies as the
Departments of Health, Agriculture and Environment and
Natural Resources.
If the
law were followed and any “excess revenue collection”
were carefully planned for as a supplemental budget,
then the potential service disruptions of these agencies
must be compensated for.
But
guess what happens when some people proudly arrogate
unto themselves the power to determine who gets what of
any “windfall”—you’d have people lining up for a slew of
one-time subsidies—for fertilizers, tuition, power, and
the latest, for tawid pasada for public-utility
vehicle (PUV) drivers—and the billions in supposed
bonanza will be depleted in the wink of an eye; the
Treasury will be back to empty, the people who lined up
will stay hungry and poor, and the time-honored system
for setting up the budget will be in total disarray—all
because one branch (Executive) overstepped its powers
and another (Congress) allowed it to, because it was
either witless or lazy or too scared of being tarred “antipoor.”
At
least, if the President had resorted to her Ahon Pinoy
antipoverty program, that would be legal and within the
budget law. And yet, as Professor Briones gently reminds
us, that partakes of a conditional cash transfer—a
subsidy that is, at least, rightly anchored on
attainment of certain conditions (i.e. indicators in
schooling or health, as when parents get cash for
keeping their children in school or improving their
nutritional status).
As this
was being written, the latest word from Palace officials
was that the latest subsidy—for the PUV players reeling
from high diesel prices—would come from the “VAT
proceeds for the first four months of the year.”
Hello!
And all along we thought Congress had passed a General
Appropriations Act for 2008. |
