House minority decry transparency in BARSc amendments on proposed budget

Minority lawmakers at the House of Representatives pushed back at considering the amendments of the proposed national budget, questioning the alleged lack of transparency in the process of the Budget Amendments and Review Subcommittee (BARSc).

ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. Antonio Tinio raised concerns over the supposed failure of BARSc to abide by the rules on committees of the lower chamber through a point of order during Wednesday’s plenary session.

He stated that it failed to furnish its committee report at the House’s official website, arguing that there was no clear summary of the modifications and realignments that were done for each particular agency, including the legislator who served as the proponent of the projects.

“We are already in the period of amendments and yet, there is still no, as far as I know there is no compliance with the requirements of the rule that the BARSc must produce a detailed report of proposed amendments,” Tinio explained.

The lawmaker mentioned that members of the chamber, including those tuning in to the budget process merely relied on the livestream of the BARSc meeting in order to identify that there were P116.32 billion amendments to the budget.

Tinio noted that even through the livestream, there was an absence of details pertaining to where the budget was going to be directly allocated and where cuts were going to be drawn.

He maintained that all increases were lump sum amounts and there was an insufficient breakdown, particularly for an agency like the Department of Public Works and Highways, which received an additional P11.49 billion.

Due to Tinio’s point of order, the plenary session was suspended for nearly 30 minutes.

As the session resumed, House Deputy Majority Leader Wowo Fortes maintained that BARSc had complied with rules through its livestreaming of the hearing while also noting that the approved changes were included in the substitute House bill that was furnished to lawmakers.

Tinio’s point of order was deemed “not well taken” by the majority, and the process proceeded.

In support of his colleague from the minority, Kamanggagawa Partylist Rep. Eli San Fernando said that the amended House Bill was only furnished to him at around 2 a.m. of the same day, giving them little to no time to look through the changes in the bill.

San Fernando likewise noted that the minority did not view the livestream as a report, noting that it was difficult to scour through nearly 4,000 pages to check for the individual amendments that were carried out.

Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco also backed the observations, noting that even with using ChatGPT to assist his team, he was still unable to rely on AI in order to verify whether the findings were 100 percent accurate.

Tiangco explained that it was important to know where the budget was taken from, given that despite the additional budget for certain projects, there was no actual addition to the proposed P7.2 trillion amount.

Similar manifestations were posed by Caloocan 2nd District Rep. Edgar Erice, Kabataan Partylist Rep. Renee Co, and Gabriela Women’s Partylist Rep. Sarah Elago.

Despite the opposing views, the lower chamber moved to adopt the changes through an amendment by substitution.