By Bernadette D. Nicolas & Butch Fernandez
President Duterte is prepared to veto unconstitutional provisions in the P4.1-trillion 2020 national budget, Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo said on Thursday.
Panelo issued the statement as Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson urged the President to exercise his veto power just like what he did in the 2019 national budget.
“Provisions in the budget that run counter to the Constitution will be vetoed by the President, there is no change in that policy,” Panelo said on Thursday.
On Thursday, Lacson continued his attack on what he deemed questionable items in the bicameral conference committee version ratified by both chambers on Wednesday afternoon.
Lacson is questioning what he found to be “double-funding” and “vague” provisions in the budget bill, sending signals this could be included among those items Malacanang could opt to line-veto when President Duterte signs into law the annual money measure passed by Congress.
Asked if he was referring to an P83-billion funding item he had earlier found to be dubious, Lacson said he raised the same issue in plenary debates on the multibillion-peso budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), where pork funds are usually parked.
“These were the same things I saw in the plenary debates on the DPWH budget. There were apparent double projects, while some were vague. Others had no clear stationing. They didn’t indicate which kilometer post. So I questioned them and the DPWH withdrew them,” Lacson recalled, in a mix of English and Filipino.
The senator recalled that he himself grilled DPWH officials who admitted they did not know nor had plans about the vague funding items, getting no assurance nor clarification on where the public funds would be spent and how these would be implemented.
“I also asked them [DPWH] then, ‘did you plan these?’ They either said no or did not reply. So I asked, ‘can you implement this?’ The reply was no. So what should we do, delete?” Lacson said, adding: “They said they’ll review it, and so they deleted P45 billion.”
Lacson pointed out that on top of that, the DPWH submitted through an “errata” at least P47.56 billion worth of new projects that senators agreed to block, following a consensus to disallow budget amendments that were not introduced in the Senate and the House.
The senator said the dubious items they opted to be deleted are the ones that were not tackled— neither in plenary nor committee deliberations on the budget bill. “Meaning, these were not part of discussions or deliberations of the House of Representatives and the Senate. These are new,” Lacson added.
Bicam panel mandate
Lacson asserted that the mandate of the bicameral conference committee (BCC) is to reconcile disagreeing provisions in the House and Senate versions of the budget bill.
The BCC, he recalled, informed them Tuesday night that “this is the reconciliation of the disagreeing provisions of the House and Senate versions” and gave them a USB, “and this is what we found.”
The senator’s office reportedly received a USB drive containing a list of 1,253 budget items worth P83.219 billion that was allegedly used as the congressmen’s “source” of their “list” of 742 projects worth P16.345 billion that were inserted in the bicameral report.
He said that a review of the list file showed institutional amendments providing “additional budgets for DICT [Department of Information and Communications Technology] and PGH [Philippine General Hospital] that were found to be okay.”
However, he said, they saw some other items that were dubious. “For example, Repair Rehab of Road Network 2nd District, 50 million. Where is that. The 2nd district of Marikina is very big. There’s an item for P50 million asphalt overlay of Catbalogan City, Samar. But Catbalogan City is too big for us to know exactly where that project is,” Lacson said.
Lacson lamented this means that the budget deliberations in the Senate and the House were effectively erased because pork items deleted in the plenary sessions of both chambers were restored.
“We all deliberated in the Senate and they did the same in the House, but it seems all of that was erased because what we took out were later restored. Their main issue now is that, they’re saying it only becomes pork barrel if the identification of the project was part of post-enactment.”
Lacson promised to make public a list of what he described to be “a list of highly questionable” funding items, citing for instance “a concreting widening in Tumauini, Isabela, P30 million, where is that? Construction of roads, Apalit, P18 million, where in Apalit is that? Same for Candaba —contruction of roads, there are so many roads in Candaba, P22 million?” This means, he said, that the apparent intention is to have the “congressman or whoever” identity the P22 million worth of project in Candaba after the President signs the budget law.
Lacson, likewise, noted that projects in the list file did not even provide any preliminary explanation, adding that other “questionable” items include flood control projects, which, he observed, are reputably prone to corruption.
He said they saw eight flood control projects in Sorsogon and Compostela Valley that were all the same, adding, “there is clear abuse of discretion here.”
Ratified
Despite Lacson’s concerns on alleged last-minute insertions, the Senate and the House of Representatives separately ratified on Wednesday the final version of the 2020 budget bill, paving the way for its early submission to Malacañang for signing into law by President Duterte before the year ends.
Lacson skipped the signing of the bicameral report on Wednesday because of the alleged insertions on the money measure.
In a bid to avert last year’s scenario of having the government operate under a reenacted budget, the budget bill was certified as urgent by the Chief Executive, doing away with the three-day interval in the second and third reading approval.
The 2020 national budget of P4.1 trillion, which is cash-based, is 11.8 percent more than the 2019 budget and is equivalent to 19.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Social and economic services will receive the largest chunk of the 2020 budget.