Impounding Congress' P50.6-billion 'pork'

BEHIND THE SCENES
Alfred P. Dizon

Contractors, officials and power brokers hungry for “pork barrel” funds must be jittery as Congress haggles with the executive department so the money would be released – if at all.

Sen. Franklin Drilon, said the Department of Budget and Management will impound P50.6 billion of the P67-billion additional pork barrel allocations for lawmakers in a bid to keep the deficit at a manageable level.

“The DBM will have to exercise impounding. When they say impounding, this means this won’t be released because DBM has to guard against the deficit,” said Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee. “If you don’t impound it, the deficit will go beyond what is allowed,” he said in an article posted on the internet.

“Remember that (impounding) doesn’t mean that there is cash to impound. You prevent the use of the authority (to use the pork) because if you do not do that, then you have to fund that authority and therefore the deficit will go up,” he added. “The impression is that if you impound there is money that doesn’t get released.”

Now, former finance committee chairman Sen. Edgardo Angara said the Aquino administration has apparently gone the way of its predecessor with its impounding of the pork funds. “It’s now up to them (pork disbursement). This showed that they will adapt former president Gloria Arroyo’s move to veto the release or condition their release pending new revenue sources.”

“What they are saying, he added, “is that they will follow Gloria – we will not release it unless Congress comes out with new sources of revenue. Even the conditional veto of the former president was “subject to identification by Congress of new sources of revenues. Effectively, wala na yon (it’s gone) because President Noynoy does not want to impose new tax measures.”

Critics of Ms Arroyo said the tack of impounding pork allocations during her term as president was meant to deprive opposition lawmakers of funds or simply to spite them.

Aside from its regular pork barrel funds of more than P23 billion last year, the previous Congress reduced debt payments by P65 billion and used the money as additional allocations for its members.

Then President Arroyo, in approving the budget, imposed a condition that the increase in the lawmakers’ allocations would be released only if they enacted new revenue measures. It turned out that Mrs. Arroyo violated her own word by releasing P10.6 billion in additional pork barrel funds to her congressional allies. President Aquino has ordered the recall of these releases.

The P10.6-billion went to the Department of Public Works and Highways. “Now what Gloria did was to order the release of the money, because if she didn’t, debt service will prevail,” Drilon said.

Now Budget Secretary Florencio Abad is saying the DBM had to “take prudent action” to help rein in the deficit. For the releases made but not yet obligated, he said they have asked the DPWH to hold the releases and recommend their cancellation. “The DPWH will submit to us a report on actions they have taken in this regard,” he said.

With this, according to Angara, the move would mean that the DPWH would have to sacrifice its own projects to help limit the budget deficit. Each senator is entitled to P200 million a year in pork funds, while each House member is allowed P70 million. In total, lawmakers have more than P87 billion this year in regular pork barrel allocations and budgetary insertions.

The Aquino administration, while keeping the huge annual pork barrel allocations of senators and congressmen intact despite an austerity program, would make sure that transparency would be strictly observed in the use of the funds.

Of the P70 million for each member of the House, Abad said P30 million would be for “soft” projects like medical, educational and livelihood assistance, while P40 million would be for “hard” projects like roads. For the senators’ funds, it would be 50 percent for soft and 50 percent for hard.

The President’s budget proposal reportedly includes a P24.8-billion lump sum for the congressional Priority Development Assistance Fund. The appropriation is P14 billion more than the P10.8 billion PDAF in this year’s budget.

The P24.8 billion is apparently the full reflection of senators’ and congressmen’s pork barrel allocations. This year, as in the past, the PDAF appears smaller because it reflects only the funds for soft projects.

Government insiders have revealed appropriations for hard projects like roads were hidden mostly in the budget of the DPWH.

Additionally, lawmakers make what were euphemistically called “congressional initiatives,” better known as budgetary insertions.

In making the entire amount of pork barrel transparent, according to Abad, the President is appealing to lawmakers to no longer make insertions in his budget proposal as the P-Noy has his own spending priorities.

What would happen if lawmakers insist in embedding funds in the budget? Abad said the President has the power to reject them.

Abad said he would present a proposed budget and its accompanying documents, including one that identifies financing sources to House leaders particularly Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. Belmonte was quoted as saying he and his colleagues would expedite hearings on the President’s first budget proposal so Congress could approve it before the end of the year. House panel hearings on the matter would start Sept. 1.

The President reportedly does not want a reenacted budget despite the flexibility it offers, referring to several reenacted outlays during the Arroyo administration. As to how the money was spent during the last administration is anybody’s guess.

Remember that P500,000 given to each congressman in Malacanang during the Arroyo administration which was exposed by Catholic priest and former Pampanga governor Ed Panlilio? We leave the rest to your imagination.