Fund raising

We must be the only country in the world that can turn a national fiscal crisis into a national gimmick.

Day after day we are treated to very public displays of patriotic generosity, from junketing "taipans" pledging millions to government employees dropping coins into collection boxes. Cops are being asked to donate one day’s worth of their already measly salary to government coffers–on a voluntary basis, of course. In the days ahead there will probably be more cutesy gimmicks to raise funds to avert our fiscal crisis. By the way, since it has become such a catchy and "in" thing, no one now seems to be disputing the fact that we are indeed in a fiscal crisis. In fact, it would almost be unpatriotic to say that we are not in a fiscal crisis!

The millions are, at the time I write this, still in the form of pledges, with no actual turn-over of money yet. But of course these acts of generosity have already made the headlines; the donors have been proclaimed heroes without actually having opened their wallets or signed their checks. At the tail-end of one of these front page stories was a statement by taipan-to-be Lance Gokongwei that paying the correct taxes is better than making donations to the government-in-crisis. Makes sense, but of course, paying the correct taxes won’t get you on the front pages.

Legislators are still hemming and hawing about their pork barrel funds; to give up or not to give up, that is the question.Congressional pork must really taste so good, even the normally masa activist party list representatives want to keep their pork. That must be the congressional version of the South Beach and Atkins diets: take my carbs but not my pork.

At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, I really wonder where all this will lead us. Great–we get all this money in a Bayanihan Fund (nice name too) that hopefully will be wisely and judiciously spent. But as we are so focused on this gimmick of raising funds for the government, who’s paying attention to the basic and fundamental fiscal reforms that need to be put in effect so that we won’t face the same situation next year, and the year after that?

When the novelty of fund raising for the government wears off and "fiscal crisis" is no longer the phrase du jour, the crisis will still be there, looming larger than ever. What gimmick will we come up with then?