House Majority Leader and Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. on Tuesday slammed Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno “for using every trick in the book to rush the Senate and the House of Representatives into approving his pet projects under the proposed 2019 national budget.”
Andaya also threatened to file a case at the Supreme Court to force Diokno to implement the salary increase by Jan. 15.
“Now, the DBM is using scare tactics, warning that a delay in the budget’s approval will affect the release of the funds for the salary hike of soldiers, policemen, teachers and civilian employees,” Andaya said in a statement.
Andaya also gave an unsolicited advice to Diokno “not make the reenacted budget as an excuse in not implementing salary increases for our civil servants.”
He said the Budget Department under Diokno has all the tools in pushing through with the salary increases this year.
“Let me refresh the good Secretary’s memory. The first round of salary increase for uniformed personnel in 2018 happened without a specific budget for it. The increase was not included in the 2018 budget proposal.
Considering the fact that the cash budget proposal this year is the same as last year, then a reenacted budget covers the needed funding for the salary increases. The President’s decision to extend the 2018 budget under Joint Resolution 3 also gives DBM more spending authority,” Andaya said.
“If Sec. Diokno forgot how he did it, I invite him over lunch to explain how to do it,” he added.
Meanwhile, Andaya assured Secretary Diokno that he will be treated fairly in the event that the Budget chief decides to attend the congressional inquiry into alleged budget preparation irregularities.
Andaya laughed off Diokno’s excuses for not attending the House probe being conducted by his committee.
“Secretary Diokno is all over town, telling journalists that he will not honor the invitation of the House to explain his side on the flood control scam issue. His reason: the Executive Department advised him not to attend the House probe,” Andaya said in a statement.
Andaya also noted Diokno’s alleged bad experience during the congressional Question Hour as reason for invoking the executive privilege not to appear in Congress.
“Bad experience is never a valid legal reason to snub the House inquiry on the flood control scam,” Andaya said.
He also pointed out that “executive privilege is an exemption to the power of inquiry of the legislative department.”
However, this only covers specific categories of information such as residential conversations, correspondences, and discussions in closed-door Cabinet meetings; information on military and diplomatic secrets and those affecting national security; and information on investigations of crimes by law enforcement agencies before the prosecution of the accused, said Andaya.
“Existing laws and jurisprudence have even declared that there is an absence of any recognition that exempts executive officials from their duty to disclose information by the mere fact of being executive officials,” Andaya said.
“I have yet to encounter a law which places bad personal experience under the ambit of executive privilege. Sec. Diokno is ill-advised to invoke executive privilege to avoid confronting the evidence piling up against him
Instead of citing “bad experience,” Andaya said Diokno may invoke his “right against self-incrimination.”
As this developed, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte proposed that the 2019 General Appropriations Bill (GAB) be submitted straight to the bicameral conference committee and be approved as proposed by Malacañang when the Congress resumes session on Monday next week.
Villafuerte, vice chairman of the House appropriations committee, said he made this call to ensure that the implementation of the government’s priority initiatives such as the ‘Build, Build, Build’ infrastructure modernization program and the salary increases for teachers and other government employees, including the pension hikes for retired uniformed personnel proceed as scheduled.
“I ask my fellow lawmakers to transcend personal and partisan political interests in passing the GAB as soon as the Congress reopens next week,” Villafuerte said.
“As lawmakers, we wield the constitutional power of the purse and, thus, have the duty and responsibility to review and approve the national budget of the government ASAP (as soon as possible) for the benefit of our people.”
Villafuerte said the 2019 National Expenditure Program submitted by the President incorporates his priority programs and projects that need to be implemented to make economic growth on the Duterte watch more inclusive as well as the reforms necessary to ensure that the budget is spent wisely.
“I urge my fellow lawmakers to rally behind my proposal to submit the budget as proposed by the Executive to the bicam (bicameral conference committee) and have it approved once the Congress resumes session on Jan. 14,” Villafuerte said.
He pointed out that the budget approval process in the Congress only hit a snag when Andaya allegedly maneuvered on the sly to submit for third and final reading a different version than what was already passed by the House earlier on second reading.
The government, Villafuerte noted, also cannot implement new projects and are constrained to spend only 25 percent of the allocated amount for ongoing projects in the first quarter of the year because of the delay in the approval of the 2019 GAB.
“Under a reenacted budget, state workers, which include public school teachers and uniformed personnel, cannot receive their salary hikes under the fourth tranche of the SSL (Salary Standardization Law), not even the benefits due them,” Villafuerte said.
Government employees are supposed to receive the fourth and final tranche of their SSL salary increases under the 2019 budget. The salary adjustments, which began in 2016 under the SSL, are meant to bring the compensation rates of government workers to at least 70 percent of current market rates.
Villafuerte said the delay in the budget approval process cannot be blamed on Malacañang, which submitted the proposed annual budget for 2019 on the same day President Duterte delivered his State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) in July last year, precisely to give the Congress enough time to review, amend and approve the 2019 GAB.
“The ball has long been in our court. We cannot allow political interests and the petty issues raised by a few to prevail in carrying out our constitutional duty as lawmakers at the expense of delaying the pay hikes and benefits for our soldiers and cops who risk their lives in the field, our public school teachers who are overworked and the tens of thousands of other government workers who deliver frontline services to the public,” Villafuerte said.