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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Palace shocked as House blocks budget

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Malacañang on Monday expressed alarm at the sudden decision by House leaders to suspend budget deliberations in a bid to get the Department of Budget and Management to back down on its cash-based budgeting system that lawmakers oppose.

Palace shocked as House blocks budget
"It seems the situation has been reversed. We might no longer need a Minority Floor Leader because the ones in power in Congress are acting like the minority." Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque, reacting to the decision of the House of Representatives to suspend budget deliberations

“We are completely shocked at the resistance of the House because we were confident that when there was a change of leadership [in the House of Representatives] we would still deal with very close allies,” said Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque.

In a radio interview, Roque said the Palace has had no problems with the national budget in the last two years.

“Although there is now a change of leadership, the President, of course, is expecting the usual cooperation from an equally strong ally, Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,” he said.

“The chairman of the committee on appropriations has not been changed; it’s still congressman Karlo Nograles. So we’re quite frankly surprised at this recent development. It’s as if the House is saying, with new leadership, the Palace better watch out, because it won’t be as easy as it was in the past,” Roque said.

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Nograles’ panel has suspended budget deliberations “until further notice” in a bid to get the Budget department to reinstate the previous obligation-based budgeting system in which a project’s funding is good for two years.

Under the new cash-based system, agencies must spend their funds and implement their projects within the fiscal year and the next three months.

Despite the disagreement, Roque said the Palace remains hopeful that members of Congress will realize that it’s important to work together.

He said disagreements on the budget could hurt the country’s credit rating.

Roque, who was a former member of the House, said he found it “curious” that the majority, not the minority, is trying to block the passage of the national budget.

“The ball is in the hands of our allies in Congress but we’re not blinking. We’re not scared of a reenacted budget,” he said.

He also hinted that congressmen who did not support the President’s proposed budget could suffer under a reenacted one.

“The congressmen better ask themselves what will happen to their pet projects because under a reenacted budget, it is Malacañang that will determine which budgets will be implemented. I don’t think they want that,” he said.

House leaders, however, allayed fears of a reenacted budget.

“We are not moving towards a reenacted budget,” House Majority Leader and Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. said at a news conference, adding that the House temporarily suspended budget deliberations “to make sense of what the budget proposals are.”

“We want to be educated on how [the cash-based budgeting system] works,” he said.

Andaya also said the House will also seek an audience with the President “to get a clear signal” on the policy direction of the DBM’s cash-based budgeting system.

Andaya said even Cabinet secretaries themselves do not seem to understand and are unable to explain to lawmakers the policy direction of the cash-based budgeting system, on how it will be implemented.

Under the proposed cash-based 2019 P3.757-trillion national budget, all payouts are valid within fiscal year and three months the following year or only until March 2020.

The Budget department has said the annual cash-based budgeting, as opposed to multi-year obligations-based budgeting, “limits incurring obligations and disbursing payments for goods delivered and services rendered, inspected, and accepted within the fiscal year.”

Nograles, meanwhile, batted for a return to the obligation-based system, saying that key government agencies would suffer huge budget cuts with the cash-based system.

“The crux of the issue here is the new cash-based budgeting system the DBM has adopted for the 2019 [National Expenditures Program]. These have resulted in budget cuts in many critical agencies, which is why the 2019 budget is P10 billion less than the 2018 budget, from P3.767 trillion to P3.757 billion,” Nograles said at a news conference.

A case in point, he said, was the Department of Public Works and Highways, which must cut its flood mitigation structures and drainage systems by 125,000.

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