THE Supreme Court ruled that the Priority Development Assistance Fund, also known as pork barrel, is unconstitutional because Congress may approve but not implement the national budget; part of the Development Assistance Program, (DAP), is unlawful because Congress alone, not the Executive, has the power of the purse.
Deliberations for the 2015 national budget, however, showed us the difficult realities on the ground that do not always make the letter of the law implementable.
First, the legislators represent certain constituencies that they have to care for—thus they do recommend, not force, certain projects. For as long as their list of projects included in the national budget do not have specific amounts and “favored” clauses—and originally come from the barangay level—we see nothing wrong there. For we have always favored the “bottoms-up” rather than “up-down” budgeting as more democratically representative of the interests of Juan de la Cruz.
Besides, would a Department of Health officer or a Department of Education officer in their Manila offices really be better equipped to know who the destitute families in the rural areas need identification for health benefits and scholarship grants compared to the legislators? We doubt that very much at this point. Over time perhaps.
And as long as all political parties’ participation in the project identification were solicited and not only by narrow partisan interests in aid of reelection in 2016, then such budget “intervention” may be acceptable.
Second, there are economic reasons savings must be declared anytime during the year rather than just at year-end.
For declaring them just at year-end will result in funds merely called “savings” but cannot, in fact, be spent—overtaken as they would by the newly approved incoming budget, or the General Appropriations Act.
If not spent, such savings would force the government to theoretically “borrow” to balance its budget and would generate more interest expense for the nation when, in fact, there are funds available.
The cost of development would increase because delaying expenditures may cause the designated projects to be beset by inflation—meaning the prices of the cost of the factors of production go up over time.
Moreover, not spending available funds can derail output growth as the DAP-phobia in the third quarter encouraged government underspending, resulting to low gross domestic product growth of only 5.3 percent and the lowest in the three years.
Government expenditures, we must understand, empower suppliers and employment goes up as hires are needed to complete projects.