By Butch Fernandez and Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz
Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon declared on Thursday that President Duterte may be left with “no choice” but to veto questionable items in the 2019 budget bill, including the P75-billion pork barrel fund which, the senator alleged, was “illegally inserted by the House of Representatives” after the Senate and the House ratified the bicameral conference committee report endorsing the final version of the annual money measure.
“Why? Because the certification of the Senate President (Vicente Sotto III) is clearly limited only to those items approved in the conference committee and ratified by both houses of Congress,” Drilon said, adding that “in effect and very clearly, the certification denies the legality and approval of the P75-billion worth of realignments.”
Fielding questions at the Kapihan sa Senado media forum, Drilon recalled a decided case in the Supreme Court involving the late Sen. Joker Arroyo when he filed a case in the Supreme Court and which case was decided on August 14, 1997.
In the ruling, he said, the Court held that “the enrolled bill doctrine is, in fact, a rule of evidence, which rests on the consideration that the President only has the authority to approve a bill validly passed by Congress and, therefore, the President’s signature as well as the attestations by the Speaker of the House and the Senate President serve as a solemn assurance that the measure was indeed passed by Congress.”
Drilon added that Senate President Sotto, in signing the bill “made very serious reservations because of the fact that the insertions were made in the enrolled bill after the bicameral committee report was ratified by both chambers.”
“Therefore, the Senate President did not attest as to the valid passage of the said P75 billion worth of insertions,” Drilon said, adding that “therefore, the President has no choice but to veto, because the Senate President said that that portion of the bill was not validly passed.”
Moreover, Drilon stated that, “if it (the 2019 budget bill) was not validly passed, it could not be signed into law as a whole, because in the case of the appropriations bill, the President can exercise line-item veto.”
“That power is not available to the President on other bills. Senate President Sotto said that those items were not passed by both houses of Congress and, therefore, there is no attestation that the P75 billion indeed go to the process that could enable the President to sign the bill en toto,” Drilon added.
In the lower house, meanwhile, the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations on Thursday said the Senate realigned P83.9 billion for their pet projects in the post-ratification budget adjustment.
In a news statement, Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. maintained that figures reflected in the budget bill are official records and beyond reproach.
Like the lower house, Andaya said the Senate undertook similar adjustments after ratification of the bicam report and increased by P83.9 billion the allocation for their pet programs and projects under various departments and agencies.
“These adjustments were submitted to the House appropriations committee by members of the Senate’s Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office beginning February 11, or three days after Congress ratified the 2019 budget on February 8. The Senate adjustments were submitted piece meal until March 8, 2019,” the lawmaker said.
The biggest increase totaling P26 billion, Andaya said, was realigned to the Department of Public Works and Highways to fund infrastructure projects which were also itemized by the Senate.
He said P17 billion was given to Department of Health as additional budget. Of this amount, P10 billion was earmarked for the Health Enhancement Program and P1 billion for Malasakit Centers.
Other institutions that received major portions of the Senate’s budget increase include the following: Senate, P1.7 billion; Office of the Vice President, P215 million; Department of Agriculture, P597 million; Department of Education, P2.5 billion; Department of Energy, P110 million; State Universities and Colleges, P2.5 billion; Department of Environment and Natural Resources, P289 million; Department of Information and Communication Technology, P2 billion.
Also included in the budget increase are Department of Interior and Local Government with P1.2 billion, Department of Justice with P1.3 million, Department of Labor with P2.1 million and Assistance to Local Government Units with P997 million.
Andaya said the submissions of these adjustments are fully documented.
“The figures I had cited with regard to the national budget are printed in the enrolled copy of the 2019 GAB which was transmitted for signature of President Duterte. To brand them as fake is an insult to both houses of Congress and the people who worked in the preparation of the bill,” he said.