16th Congress may have lower budget

MANILA, Philippines - Members of the incoming 16th Congress would have to make do with a budget about half a billion pesos lower than what the present Congress has at its disposal.

Still, they will have billions for salaries and funds for maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE), which have generated a scandal in the Senate that led to the resignation of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile.

Based on the 2014 agency budget ceilings set by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the Senate, House of Representatives, Commission on Appointments, and the Senate and House electoral tribunals will have a combined budget of P9.917 billion for next year.

The amount is nearly P500 million lower than the P10.414 billion that the legislature, its election tribunals and appointments commission have for this year.

If DBM would have its way, the House budget would go down from P6.357 billion this year to P6.051 billion in 2014, while funds for the Senate would decrease from P3.294 billion to P3.077 billion.

The Senate Electoral Tribunal will have an additional P4 million, from P125 million to P129.4 million, despite the fact that it will have no job to do as there is no candidate in the recent senatorial election who has filed an election protest against a winner.

The last case it disposed of was the one involving former senator Juan Miguel Zubiri and Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III.

On the other hand, the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal would gain P7 million, from P145 million to P152 million. The HRET will have a lot of election protests to handle – 32 as of the last count.

The Commission on Appointments would have an additional P15 million, from P492.9 million to P507.5 million. The panel has only four more Cabinet appointments to dispose of.

The DBM set agency budget ceilings as a guide for putting together the proposed 2014 national budget.

Congress, of course, has the power to agree to its suggested lower funding ceiling, keep its budget at the present level or even increase it.

It’s not only the legislature’s budget that would go down under the DBM proposal.

Even funds for President Aquino’s office would decrease by more than P200 million, from P2.701 billion this year to P2.467 billion next year.

Aside from its operating budget, Congress has at its disposal P25 billion a year in pork barrel funds. The congressional pork barrel is officially called Priority Development Assistance Fund.

It allocates P200 million for each senator and P70 million for each member of the House of Representatives.

The P25-billion funding level for the pork barrel would most likely be retained in 2014.  

JPE, Ping comply with COA

Meanwhile, only two senators have so far complied with the Commission on Audit (COA)’s requirement to submit complete liquidation of their expenses for last year.

They were Enrile and Sen. Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the Senate committee on accounts, sources told The STAR yesterday.

“The COA is trying its very best to implement the regulation but it seems a majority of the legislators are not up for transparency,” the COA official privy to the government audit said.

Sen. Vicente Sotto, who had resigned as Senate majority leader, vowed to comply with the COA rules, saying his office is still collating the required liquidation documents.

Earlier, Lacson lamented that most of his colleagues nixed the proposed guidelines formulated by the Senate and the COA prior to the adjournment of the 15th Congress last week.

Lacson circulated the guidelines in the form of a Senate resolution. But other senators seemed uninterested.

He expressed dismay that while some senators were critical of the Senate under Enrile’s leadership, several senators were not transparent with their own use of funds. – With Christina Mendez