Drilon: Blame Palace for budget impasse

It’s Malacañang, not the Senate, that should take the blame for delays in the passage of the 2006 national budget, according to Senate President Franklin Drilon’s chief of staff.

The two sides have been blaming each other for the impasse.

"It’s Malacañang’s hardened position not to part with its bloated pork barrel fund that caused the standoff," Antonio Gallardo said in a statement issued to the media yesterday.

"The stubbornness of Malacañang and the House in refusing to realign the P26 billion the Senate slashed from the proposed P1-trillion budget and to instead increase the budgets of education and other social services has resulted in the deadlock," he said.

The Senate would be willing to restore the cuts if the amount would be channeled to education instead to ease the classroom and teacher shortage in the public school system, Gallardo said.

Among the cuts made were for two new appropriations — Kilos Asenso Support Fund (P5 billion) and the Kalayaan Barangay Program Fund (P3.69 billion) — which Arroyo critics said are Mrs. Arroyo’s pork barrel fund.

The two funding programs are aimed at speeding up economic development in the countryside.

Besides cutting the budget by P31 billion, senators also scrapped the entire budget of the Presidential Commission on Good Government in the wake of secret negotiations by the PCGG to reach compromise settlements with the family of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.