The proposed 2016 national budget is an election budget which explains why the biggest agencies with the biggest allocations tend to be associated also with election spending, says former national treasurer Professor Leonor Briones.
Briones was speaking in a lecture on the national budget at the Silliman University Luce Auditorium in Dumaguete City on Monday.
Prof. Briones, who is also chair of the Board of Trustees of Silliman University, told her audience only P829.861 billion or 27.6 percent of the P3.002 trillion national budget will undergo free detailed examination by Congress because P930 billion is automatically appropriated, including the P430 billion Special Purpose Fund and un-programmed fund of the President.
She said that Congress did not have the opportunity even to review the entire P3.002 trillion budget because they have to focus on the agencies, they could not touch the budget on personnel which is about P810 billion, they could not touch the budget on the maintenance and other operating expenses), because its election time.
They had very limited time to examine the budget, but what is important here is again the repetition of the definition of what savings is which is the crux of the debate not only in this forum but also in many other forums as well, Briones pointed out.
Government says that it can create savings at any time in any quarter when the definition of savings which is generally accepted is that it is determined at the end of the year. Briones said what happened was they transfer funds from one budget item to the other.
She recalled that in 2014, the Supreme Court has issued a unanimous decision of what is actual savings, and that the definition of savings made by Congress is not constitutional at all, and so right now there are three petitions regarding the use of DAP expenditures in the 2015 budget.
Briones lamented the fact that in our system of government the executive takes full control of the budget, and the role of congress is very limited because even if they pass legislations given so much to a certain agency, it can always be reversed, it can always be reduced, they can transfer funds, they can issue negative SAROs even if SAROs have already been issued.
It is for this reason that even if the Department of Education has the highest budget for 2016 which is P411,44 billion it’s still not enough while the budget for State Universities and Colleges is only 44 billion which is to be divided among the more than 100 SUCs all over the country. One third of the budget practically goes to the University of the Philippines.
Briones believes that a legislator would be in a delima when an executive with over P500 billion that he has full control of will make things done to put certain provisions in the general appropriations act.
As far as an executive is concerned, he or she needs to be reelected, and for them to be reelected, they need to access the funds which are held by the executive, Briones quipped. (PNA/JFP/Juancho Gallarde)
