(Eagle News) — Let’s be honest.
This was the message of Senator Ping Lacson to lawmakers amid assurances there was no pork in the 2018 national budget.
“That’s what the Department of Budget and Management and the House appropriations committee always say before, during and after our budget deliberations..(but) how do you explain (certain things)?” he asked.
He said there were, for instance, “big lump sums” in several agencies such as the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Education and the Department of Agriculture, among others.
“How would they account or explain the P8.3 billion that we discovered and realigned to fund the free tuition of students in state universities and colleges in the 2017 General Appropriations Act?” he added.
He also asked why legislators in both houses of Congress were “being asked to submit lists of their projects just before their period of amendments of the appropriations bill or even before that,” and why there were “billboards in some jurisdictions/districts where some congressmen boldly claim that ongoing projects are theirs.”
“Let’s be honest to our people and to ourselves,” he asked.