(Eagle News)—House appropriations chair Rolando Andaya Jr. said the House of Representatives will respect whatever President Rodrigo Duterte decides to do with the 2019 budget bill.
He said a veto, however, would give the chief executive the “opportunity to restore more than P80 billion” allegedly slashed by the Senate “from allocations intended for the President’s projects.”
He said he was “confident that the Office of the President would consider our exposés in their review of the 2019 General Appropriations Bill and find ways on how to restore the Senate budget cuts in the President’s veto message.”
Andaya said these removed items include the following:
1. Department of Transportation – P5 billion for right-of-way projects
2. Department of Public Works and Highways – P 11.033 billion for right-of-way projects
3. Foreign Assisted Projects under DPWH – P2.5 billion
4. Technical Education and Skills Development Authority — P3 billion for scholarship of rebel returnees, out-of-school youths and rehabilitating drug dependents enrolled under the Universal Access to Tertiary Education.
5. Department of Environment and Natural Resources – P2.254 billion for National Greening Program.
6. Department of Foreign Affairs – P7.5 billion budget for SEA Games taken out, but P5 billion transferred to Philippine Sports Commission and P2.5 billion nowhere to be found.
7. Miscellaneous Personnel Benefit Fund – P13.4 billion.
8. Pension and Gratuity Fund – P39 billion which covers the payment for:
- Pension of AFP retirees; war or military veterans of the DND; retired uniformed personnel of the DILG, PC-INP, NAMRIA and Philippine Coast Guard; and other retirees of the National Government.
- Retirement benefits for optional retirees of the National Government; retired personnel of GOCCs which are financially unable to pay said benefits; and personnel devolved to LGUs.
- Separation benefits or incentives of affected personnel pursuant to the implemention of : (i) restructuring of agencies affected by the integration and automation of the Budget Treasury and Management System and the operationalization of the Treasury Single Account; and (ii) rightsizing, merger, streamlining , abolition or privatization.
- Monetization of leave credits of National Government personnel and transferred leave credits of those devolved to the LGUs.
Andaya’s statement appears to be a turnaround from his previous one in which he pushed for the passage of the budget bill transmitted by Congress to the President, saying that once it was enacted into law, it would “pass not only the test of constitutionality and legality, but also of transparency and accountability.”
The bill transmitted by Congress to the OP is also the House-enrolled bill which senators had slammed for allegedly containing illegal “alignments” that were made post-Congress ratification.
Andaya, however, had said they were mere “itemizations” that would make the budget bill easier to scrutinize.
Senate President Tito Sotto had in the end signed the House-enrolled bill for transmittal to the OP but with “strong reservations” to break the impasse between the two Houses of Congress, leaving it up to President Duterte, whose signature is required for the bill to become law, to decide whether to veto the controversial provisions.
In a speech on Thursday, April 11, though, Duterte said he would “outright” veto the entire budget bill “pag tagilid iyan.”
Duterte had warned against the dangers of a reenacted budget that would necessarily result from a vetoed budget bill, but said he would not sign an “illegal document.”
The government has already been operating on a reenacted budget in the absence of a budget bill signed into law.