The House Appropriations Committee is restoring the full budgets of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) after initially shrinking their 2018 budgets to just P1,000 each.
The CHR’s 2018 budget of P678 million was previously slashed to just P1,000 after it was accused of being selective in its investigations on human-rights violations by Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez and his allies in Congress (119 representatives voted in favor of the move to slash the CHR budget vs. 32 against).
The proposed NCIP budget had been reduced from P1.1 billion to P1,000 after the agency allegedly failed to protect the lumads, an indigenous-people group in Mindanao.
And the ERC was given the same P1,000 budget from its P351-million proposal for allegedly failing to address graft and corruption issues that continue to hound the commission.
According to a statement released by the House of Representatives, their proposed budgets have been restored after the respective heads of the three offices appealed to Alvarez in a meeting that was mediated by House Majority Leader Rodolfo C. Fariñas Sr. and Appropriations Committee Chairman Karlo Alexei B. Nograles.
Right or wrong, this turn of events only goes to show that the budget season can be payback time for legislators in Congress.
In some cases, it can be an opportunity for redress for those legislators whose committee investigations have been frustrated by the lack of cooperation coming from concerned public officials. They can closely scrutinize the proposed budgets of uncooperative government agencies to see whether they truly deserve their share of people’s taxes.
We have seen how legislators at times have met stiff stonewalling from government executives who have found the temerity to either keep mum or snub altogether hearings and investigations in Congress. We have seen officials failing to show up in hearings, despite a congressional committee’s use of its power to subpoena.
There was a time when the issuance of subpoenas for government officials to appear in committee hearings was a matter that was exercised only during rare instances. Despite disagreements with the executive and various government offices, legislators then always tried to operate by cooperation.
Senators and congressmen invited the “noncompulsory” participation of government departments and their agencies—and they almost always got it. Public officials concerned in congressional investigations and hearings usually showed up to provide testimony and deliver the necessary official documents, which enabled legislators to conduct the investigative and oversight functions of their committees.
Recent times have shown, however, that this noncompulsory approach has ceased to be the norm between the legislature and government offices. In fact, even the compulsory approach, as we have seen in recent legislative investigations, has resulted in very little cooperation and has elicited nothing but dilatory tactics from government officials eager to stave off any attempt to shed light on the anomalies hounding their offices.
So, can we blame senators and congressmen if they begin exploring other legislative alternatives, including Congress’s power of the purse, in order to sanction government executives whose failure to provide documents and testimony undermines Congress’s ability to exercise its constitutional authorization, appropriation and oversight functions? Legislators are well within their rights to do so.
The noncooperation of government executives and their offices in legislative investigations is simply unacceptable. It belittles the oversight and investigative functions of the legislature that are so indispensable to our system of checks and balances.
What is fundamentally at stake here is the responsibility of government agencies to respect the oversight and investigative functions of Congress. Government executives are deeply mistaken if they believe they can elude compliance with Congress’s request for documents and testimony.
Indeed, it is the obligation of legislators to ensure that their respective committees are able to exercise oversight over the government offices in their jurisdictions. If they cannot do so, because said government offices or their executives refuse to cooperate, then legislators need to consider whether they should continue to provide funds for those offices.
This sends a strong message that Congress, as a coequal branch of government, will not stand for any stonewalling on the part of certain government officials. And those who seek to limit Congress’s access to information necessary for it to perform its legislative and oversight functions could face sanctions through its powers of appropriation.