Gloria to veto budget if her pork is not restored - Malaya 06.07.2006
"Kung yung budget ay talagang masyadong masisira, bagama’t ako ay naniniwala na magiging responsible ang mga mambabatas…wala akong magagawa. Baka kailangan nga na i-veto dahil masusing pinag-aralan ang panukalang budget at walang bisa ang budget na tatanggalin ang mga makahulugang programa para sa tao," Arroyo said in an interview over dzMM.
Budget talks reached an impasse Monday after the Senate contingent in the bicameral conference committee stood firm on its decision to retain the cuts – P26.3 billion coming from programmed appropriations and P37.7 billion from unprogrammed funds.
The House approved a P1.04 trillion budget. The Palace proposal is P1.056 trillion.
No schedule was set for the next bicameral meeting with barely two days left before Congress adjourns sine die on Friday.
"The reenactment of the 2005 General Appropriations Act (P907.6 billion) is now a clear and present danger," said Rep. Joey Salceda (Kampi, Albay), chairman of the House appropriations committee.
A reenacted budget will give President Arroyo a virtually unlimited supply of "pork barrel." Last year’s budget was P907 billion.
"The prospect of a re-enacted budget is very strong," Sen. Joker Arroyo said."The President wins."
Sen. Arroyo, who sits in the Senate bicameral panel, said the President could freely re-align budget items that were contained in the national outlay of the previous year.
"Unfortunately, she’s getting what she wants," he said. "The entire reenacted budget is pork barrel."
The President said the people are expecting enough funds for health, crime prevention, fighting rebellion, and pushing economic growth.
"Hindi natin matatawaran ang mga pangangailangang ito," she said.
"Sayang na binabawasan ang budget…Sana hindi mabawasan ang budget na ito," she said.
She said the Kilos Asenso Fund is government’s counterpart fund for projects of local government units such as the development of land for agribusiness and microfinance.
The Kalayaan Barangay Fund, she said, will be used to finance government services in far-flung areas to dissuade residents from joining rebel groups.
The Senate scrapped the two funds on suspicion it would be used by the President’s allies in preparation for the 2007 elections.
Senators also scrapped the budgets of the Presidential Commission on Good Government and the National Printing Office while assigning a P1 budget to the VFA Commission.
Mrs. Arroyo said she expects lawmakers to be "responsive" and to restore the cuts, adding that Malacañang studied thoroughly the budget before submitting it to Congress last year.
She said she will not call for a special session if Congress fails to pass the 2006 budget because "masasayang lang ang pondo sa mahabang debate at maaaksayang oras."
She said government can survive on the reenacted 2005 budget.
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye appealed to legislators to spare the budget from partisan politics.
Sen. Arroyo said the positions of the Senate and the House on the national outlay are "world’s apart at the moment."
Sen. Arroyo credited the President with orchestrating the re-enactment of the 2005 national budget.
"This little girl is very smart; (she) operated smoothly," he said.
He said the President initially wanted to have the 2006 budget approved but would "naturally" welcome a re-enacted budget.
"The President holds the leverage," he said. "How Congress lost the power of the purse is the one of the wonders of this country."
Sen. Arroyo said what is lamentable is that the House, which badly needs the budget for the re-election of their members, was a party to the conspiracy.
The House took about eight months to approve the budget.
"The House, among the three (Senate, House and Palace), is the one who needs (the budget) most. This is an election budget," he said.
A source in the Senate panel in the bicameral conference committee said Sen. Manuel Villar, Senate finance head and panel leader, was trying to salvage the 2006 budget as of Tuesday afternoon by holding a meeting with some members of the House panel.
Villar, the source said, launched the last-ditch effort in his personal capacity. Villar was congressman for nine years and was speaker in his last term.
"The budget is now at the ICU (intensive care unit). The chances are 70-30 percent rate of survival. ‘Dr. Villar’ is giving his best shot," the source said.
The government has been operating under a re-enacted budget since January.
Senate President Franklin Drilon raised the possibility that the President’s veto threat is a "ploy" to pressure the Senate to restore the cuts.
He said the President has the right to veto the budget.
"If she vetoes, that’s her own prerogative. However, it’s unfortunate if she vetoes. Because then, we will be working on the 2005 budget where there will be a lot of discretion involved," he said.
"Operating under a reenacted budget repeatedly does not reflect sound management," he also said.
"President Arroyo would again enjoy a lot of flexibility in fund disbursements because many of the items in the 2005 budget are now free for realignment," Drilon said.
"Either way she wins, but the economy would suffer. It is not good to operate under a reenacted budget," he added.
Drilon said the cuts made by the Senate were not arbitrary but were a result of a thorough scrutiny by the finance committee.
"These cuts were made after reviewing the entire expenditure program," he said.
He said the Kilos Asenso fund was not listed under the items of the Department of Agriculture in the proposed budget, contrary to Mrs. Arroyo’s claim.
"This amount is found in the lump-sum allocation for local government units," he said.
He nevertheless said the Senate panel was not giving up on efforts to find a compromise.
"We are pushing hard for its passage at this point," he said.
Salceda has practically given up on the passage of the 2006 budget.
He said since Congress is adjourning sine die this week, it would be impractical to force the passage of the budget as the submission of Malacañang’s proposed budget for 2007 is just a month away.
He said the deadlock in the budget talks took place after the House panel took a "hardline" position that the bicameral conference committee restore all the Senate cuts.
"Our positions (congressmen and senators) are further apart as the Pacific Ocean where before, it was just the South China Sea," he said.
Salceda would not elaborate but said a deadlock occurs whenever "personalities and politics come into play."
"There is just too much bad blood between Malacañang and the Senate," he said.
He said they could not agree on the Senate’s "scrap-and-build" proposal where details of the proposed appropriations would be tackled first before the "spending aggregate" or the total amount of the budget is discussed.
Salceda said they insisted on the opposite, which he calls the "top-down" mode because "once you have the cake, it’s easier to cut it."
"The House would never agree to the Senate’s scrap-build mode because it has to be done in a top-down approach. We cannot discuss the details first before agreeing on the aggregate because if you want to do that, you tend to miss out in efficiency in budget allocation," he said.
Salceda said the proposed P115 billion in capital outlay should not have been cut by P24.5 billion because this should even be increased to P240 billion or 4 percent of the gross domestic product.
Party-list Rep. Teddy Casiño of Bayan Muna said Malacañang is still the winner even with a reenacted budget.
"Malacañang wants a reenacted budget just as much as it wants the House version passed. Either way, we lose."
"Should Congress fail to approve the 2006 budget, Malacañang still wins because a reenacted budget gives more unprogrammed and realigned funds for their purse. At the same time Malacañang gets to blame the Senate," he said.
Casiño said while the Senate has junked the P8 billion presidential pork barrel which they fear could be disbursed indiscriminately for Cha-cha and the upcoming impeachment against Arroyo, she would have hundreds of billions of pesos of realigned and unprogrammed funds under her discretion in a reenacted budget.
"In a reenacted budget, we will be sacrificing a lot of vital government funding for social services such as the proposed additional allowances for government employees and the Senate proposal to increase education spending by as much as P4 billion," he added.
He defended the Senate for "clipping" the executive’s spending powers by scrapping the P8 billion in presidential pork barrel funds "and minimizing the loan counterpart funding for so many infrastructure which are not really clearly defined."
Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. said his office is releasing this week half of the P1 billion earmarked as partial payment of arrearages in pension benefits of World War II veterans.
Andaya said he is rushing the release of Notices of Cash Allocation (NCA) for the P1 billion to immediately facilitate the issuance of funds to 8,956 veterans and pensioners, as well as to settle 5,237 school bills of their dependents.
Upon release, the first NCA worth P500 million will be used to pay partial arrearages in old age pension of WWII veterans, death pension, and educational benefits of their dependents. The P1 billion is part of a three-year staggered payment scheme starting this year to settle the accumulating "back pay" in pension which has so far reached P5.7 billion.
Of the P1 billion pension fund, P701.52 million will be used to pay old age pension of 5,487 veterans while P168.48 million will go to death pensions of 3,475 veterans. The remaining P130 million will be used to pay 5,237 school bills. – Regina Bengco, Wendell Vigilia and Dennis Gadil
Drilon: Late budget insertion smells of pork - Malaya 06/07/2006
SENATE President Franklin Drilon yesterday said he smelled Palace "pork" in the P2.3-billion additional funds allocated to the Department of Transportation and Communication in the 2006 national budget.
The P2.3 billion has no clear use and was not even included in the original budget proposal submitted by Malacañang to the House, he said. It was a last-minute insertion of the budget department to the DOTC outlay during the House budget hearings that lasted eight months.
The DOTC budget increment was supposed to go to construction, maintenance and repairs of airports nationwide. It is part of the P26.3 billion programmed funds that were slashed by the Senate from the national budget.
Drilon said the additional funds appeared more questionable when some P23 million of the P2.3 billion was earmarked for the repair of an Iloilo airport that is supposed to close down by year-end.
"That is why the argument that this (P2.3 billion) is for infrastructure is without basis. This was not necessary," said Drilon, who is from Iloilo.
He added even the DOTC was caught unprepared on how to spend the additional funds that it was forced to submit rounded off figures to the Senate.
"They have submitted their proposals to the DBM without these airports. Suddenly, they were told by the DBM Secretary, ‘here’s P2.3 billion, build airports all over the country.’ They were not prepared. That’s why they just started to assign the amount," he said.
Drilon said Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza admitted to him during plenary debates on the national budget that the additional P2.3 billion was an "imposition" on them.
Drilon was refuting the claim of the House budget contingent that the cut on programmed funds would heavily impact on infrastructure projects lined up for this year.
House appropriations chair Rep. Joey Salceda has said the budget cuts were actually "capital outlays" earmarked for infrastructure spending that would pump-prime the economy.
Aside from slashing the programmed funds, the Senate also pruned unprogrammed funds by P37.7 billion.
Unprogrammed funds are expenditures that are subject to availability of funds. It could be funded either through a surplus budget or by resorting to borrowing.
Drilon justified the Senate move, saying it would prevent government from resorting to unnecessary borrowing. — Dennis Gadil
New security pact may allowUS meddling in gov’t: Miriam - Malaya 06/02/2006
SEN. Miriam Defensor-Santiago yesterday warned that the new security agreement between the Philippines and the US could result in US meddling in government decisions as she insisted that Senate ratification of the agreement is a must.
The new security arrangement will be observed within the framework of the 1999 RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).
Santiago said the exchange of notes between the two countries "indirectly extends the application of the VFA to US military forces who might participate in exercises in Philippine territory that address non-traditional security issues."
She said these "non-traditional concerns" could be interpreted to include health, financing, disasters, money laundering, small arms smuggling, piracy and human trafficking.
She warned that the US could meddle in the affairs of the country under the so-called "principle of responsibility to protect" and the "principle of right of human intervention."
"The exchange of notes provides for the principle of enhanced cooperation, but this principle could be used by the US to participate in decision-making mechanisms of the Philippine government," she said.
Santiago also insisted that the security agreement, granting that government’s position that it is not a treaty is correct still needs to be ratified by the Senate before it can take effect.
"Assuming arguendo, that this is not a treaty, it is still an international agreement and therefore, needs Senate ratification before it can be effective," Santiago said in yesterday’s public hearing of the Legislative Oversight Committee on VFA (LOVFA).
Santiago stressed that the Constitution provides that "no treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred in by at least two-thirds of all the members of the Senate."
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye insisted that the agreement, which came into force on April 12, 2006 under President Arroyo’s memorandum order No. 212, is not a treaty and does not need Senate rafitication. He said even Santiago’s colleagues, like Sen. Richard Gordon, do not agree with her view that the agreement is a treaty.
"As far as the Executive is concerned, we have expressed the view that this is not a treaty and this does not require the ratification of the Senate," he said.
Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz Jr. said the security engagement board (SEB) will meet this month to tackle the activities scheduled for this year under the new agreement. The secretaries of foreign affairs and defense will approve the recommendations of the SEB.
Santiago said that unlike prior agreements such as the VFA and the Mutual Logistical Support Agreement, which both implement the basic Mutual Defense Treaty, the exchange of notes between the Philippines and the US adds the new purpose of cooperation in addressing non-traditional security issues.
"The exchange of notes does not merely implement the VFA, but seems to be an indirect attempt to make the VFA applicable to US military personnel participating in military exercises in the Philippines for a wide variety of purposes other than those allowed by the Mutual Defense Treaty," she said. – Dennis Gadil and Regina Bengco
posted by brodkaster43 at Sabado, Hunyo 10, 2006
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