Pork-free budget a myth

Pork-free budget a myth | Daily Tribune

A tighter scrutiny of the yearly budget by watchdogs, including independent groups, was among the direct results of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund and other pork barrel laws “past and present” as unconstitutional.

The ruling again becomes relevant after discovering several items in the national budget, the purposes for which are very vague and considered as funds to allow Malacañang to wield political leverage.

In general, lump sum funds or those for no specific purpose are suspected to be pork barrel and the current appropriation has more than P2 trillion of such discretionary items.

In the 2024 General Appropriations Act, unprogrammed allocations grew by P449.5 billion, the bulk of which consists of insertions made by lawmakers.

Many of the lump sums are under the so-called special purpose funds that are legal and necessary, such as providing the government with the means to respond to emergencies; local government units are also provided substantial amounts.

The SC decision striking down the PDAF was clear in pointing out the violation of the principle of separation of powers, “insofar as it has conferred unto legislators the power of appropriation by giving them personal, discretionary funds from which they can fund specific projects which they determine.”

The ruling also indicated that discretionary funds violated the principle of non-delegability of legislative power “insofar as it has created a system of budgeting wherein items are not textualized into the appropriations bill.”

Less than a year after the 2013 Belgica decision that outlawed the PDAF, a petition was filed seeking to declare all lump sum appropriations unconstitutional per se.

In that instance, the SC clarified that some lump sum appropriations were considered constitutional “as long as the lump sum amount(s) (are) meant as a funding source for multiple programs, projects or activities that may all be classified as falling under one singular appropriation purpose.”

The rationale was that the “lump sum” effectively functions as a line item compliant with the doctrine of singular correspondence.

In contrast, the pork barrel was treated as a funding source for multiple unrelated purposes such as “scholarships, medical missions, assistance to indigents, preservation of historical materials, construction of roads, flood control, etc.”

The PDAF, the SC ruling indicated, ultimately allowed those who were to disburse the funds — the legislators — to decide the public purposes they deemed a priority.

The ruling continues to ring loud in the ongoing battle against the pork barrel system as it stated that the invalidated scheme authorized legislators to intervene, assume, or participate in any of the various post-enactment stages of the budget execution.

These included project identification, modification and revisions, fund releases, and/or fund realignments unrelated to the power of congressional oversight.

Key to the ruling was that these illegal funds were “lump sum allocations to legislators from which they are able to fund specific projects which they themselves determine,” which is a statement easy enough to understand.

Sifting through the current budget, such items remain and suddenly pop up when programs or pursuits associated with the initiatives of either the House or the Senate are brought to light.

Consider the P26.7-billion Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program, or AKAP, with the idiotic aim of providing subsidies to the “near poor” instead of providing them with gainful employment.

The national budget can’t be “free of pork” unless the discretionary funds are removed and legislators confine themselves to making laws instead of overseeing government projects.