HE said — SHE said

While the nation is fixed on the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) fiasco that is fast burning Nicanor Faeldon to damnation, House members are again toying with the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) and threatening next year’s national budget of “pork barrel” infestation.

Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab fears yet another delay in the submission of the 2020 budget as efforts are being made by his peers to withdraw the GAB.

For Ungab, once considered for the House speakership when the leading candidates were still at loggerheads with one another, there is a clear intention by some congressmen to delay the budget.

Once it crawls, there will be opportunities for insertions. It is through amendments that the lawmakers make hay. The insertions are their awaited sunshine.

But Ungab seems to be the lone voice against “pork” at the House.

Ungab raised his concerns through a letter to Deputy Speaker and Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, Deputy Speaker Neptali Gonzales, House Majority Leader Martin Romualdez and House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano.

He said the withdrawal of the GAB initiated by Villafuerte will only serve to derail its approval.

Villafuerte recalled the GAB (House Bill 4228) from the plenary Wednesday last week. He claimed the budget measure was prematurely filed.

The youthful solon also said Cayetano was made a co-author of the bill without his knowledge. Thus, the need to correct the measure.

But Ungab countered that it has long been the practice of the House to prepare the GAB immediately after the submission of the National Expenditure Program and that it was normal to include as authors of the bill the top House leaders, like the Speaker.

“(Villafuerte) wanted to change the GAB. He instructed the staff and us that he wants to amend it, which I think is wrong,” said Ungab, adding that some members of the House are trying to reintroduce clauses vetoed by President Rodrigo Duterte the last time.

He begged off from identifying these congressmen. But they are looking at a P4.1 trillion national budget, too much and too inviting for those salivating for the moolah that seldom comes in one big bunch.

Ungab has reasons to air his warning. The country worked on a reenacted budget early this year as delays were forced on last year’s GAB.

Some lawmakers from the House of Representatives and the Senate have reportedly inserted about P95 billion in “pork,” with the nearly 300 congressmen reportedly rewarded with P60 million each.

Former House Appropriations chief Rolando Andaya accused senators of having inserted P75 billion in this year’s national budget.

President Rodrigo Duterte, meanwhile, vetoed more than P95 billion line items identified by the Senate as “pork barrel.”

Instead of getting a tap on his shoulder, House sources said he received a tongue-lashing from Cayetano.

“He was berated by the Speaker in front of his fellow congressmen,” the source said. “Cong. Sid was told by the Speaker that it’s not him who should get his way but the top House leader.”

Ungab was said to have been warned of being stripped of his chairmanship of the House Committee on Appropriations if he “would not toe the line.”

On the surface, Cayetano made an assurance that the approval of the 2020 budget will not be delayed. He also denied the presence of “pork” in the national budget.

Other than the Bureau of Corrections drama involving Faeldon, this issue should also deserve our attention.

Corruption happens especially when there’s pork.

And when one squeals, it is time to check the pen for anomalies.

There is furor anew at the House of Representatives over the passage of the national budget.

This time, some congressmen expressed fears that pork barrel insertions may again be attempted following the withdrawal recently of the bill providing for the proposed P4.1 trillion national budget for 2020.

“It smells like the greasy patronage pork is being put in the oven,” said Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Carlos Zarate in a statement last Monday.

Unsurprisingly, the point of contention is the General Appropriations Bill (GAB), with one side saying there is no GAB, and the other saying the opposite.

When Deputy Speaker for Finance Luis Raymund Villafuerte moved to withdraw House Bill 4228, or GAB, from the plenary last 28 August after it was filed for first reading on that same day, he reasoned that it was “prematurely” filed.

He explained that government agencies have yet to present their budget proposals to the chamber by the end of the week, “so how can the House Appropriations Committee submit House Bill 4228 without having heard the presentations of all government agencies covered by the proposed 2020 GAA (General Appropriations Act)?” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, House Appropriations panel chair Isidro Ungab explained that filing HB 4228 was not “premature,” “the budget bill being a replica of the NEP (National Expenditure Program)” submitted by Malacañang.

In other words, the NEP is the GAB in question. And this is why alarm bells were rung about the possibility of pork getting into the national budget.

The need to “scrutinize” what will be refiled following the withdrawal and suspension of budget deliberations was raised anew.

Also, Rep. Ungab pointed out that it would cause delays to the budget approval schedule, as what happened with the 2019 national budget.

Somehow assurances of a “timely and transparent passage of the 2020 GAB,” as Rep. Villafuerte stressed, seem to be falling on cynical ears.

Also, the congressman’s explanation that insertions are impossible because there is “no approved GAB to begin with” is making us presume that the argument is either a matter of semantics or crossed lines.

Either way, it is a kind of “short-circuiting” — again his term for what they do not want to do to the normal legislative process — that could set a conflagration to the entire budget if our dear lawmakers are not careful.

“Congressional insertions are budgetary amendments that certain lawmakers insert on the sly after a consolidated GAB has already been passed by both chambers — a post-ratification process that the Supreme Court had struck down and which certain House leaders resorted to in the 17th Congress and that led to the delay in the approval of the 2019 budget,” Villafuerte said in a statement.

There would appear to be a problem here, then, considering that the premise seems to be different.

“GAB has always followed the NEP. That is the established procedure,” Ungab said.

So, all the rumblings at this time is really a sign that last year’s wrangling remains fresh and paranoia-inducing.