SAYING that the government’s underspending has created a big budget, a senior House leader batted for a minimum P10,000 or P11,000 Christmas bonus for every state worker this year.

Laban Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara of Aurora said the government underspent by P175.9 billion from January to December, which, in turn,  brought down the nine-month deficit by close to P53 billion from the P260 billion posted in the same period last year.

Overall, Angara said the 2012 deficit is forecast to fall sharply to P180 billion from the programmed P300 billion, which, according to him, carves a fiscal room for President Aquino to order a bigger and earlier Christmas bonus for government workers.

“By law and tradition, it is the President who orders the additional Christmas bonus for government workers, taking into consideration the status of government finances at the end of the year,” said Angara.

The legislator recalled that last year, Mr. Aquino issued Administrative Order 3 which granted a P10,000 “Performance Enhancement Incentive” (PEI) to all government employees despite what he described as the emerging “bad fiscal numbers” then.

Of the P10,000, P7,000 was shouldered by the national government, while P3,000 came from savings of the agency. The PEI of local government and government corporate sector workers, however, were sourced from local or corporate budgets.

Because the government is on track of turning in a good fiscal report card for 2011, Angara said “the least that President Aquino can do is repeat the PEI of P10,000 last year or make it P11,000 in 2011.”

“An P11,000 PEI is affordable and reasonable. It means a Christmas bonus equivalent to P916 per month per employee. As to budget impact, it will cost about P12.8 billion, which is less than 10 percent of the projected savings,” Angara said.

He said if the government “is having a hard time spending money which has been budgeted by Congress, then one way to spend  it fast is by putting some of it directly into the pockets of government employees, and let them do the economic pump-priming  themselves through Christmas spending.”

“Anyway, 12 percent of what the government will disburse will go back to it through VAT and other taxes when said bonus is spent for purchases or services,“ Angara said.

Angara said he hopes that Mr. Aquino will continue the practice of his predecessors and proudly say that these are the dividends of good governance.