"It has become unbearable."
"It has become unbearable."
The making of the annual national budget—the GAA (General Appropriation Act) is one of the most important activities of a democratic society, and the GAA is one the two documents that are of greatest significance for the development of a capitalist economy. Yet today the budget-making process and the people responsible for its making are under severe attack.
The attack isa premised on four widely held beliefs, to wit (1) that legislations interfere in the making of the national budget, (2) that unworthy economic and social projects get included in the NEP (National Expenditures Program), (3) that many budget items are overpriced on inadequately documented, and (4) that insertions into the budget are made after the proposed GAA has been approved by the House of Representatives, from which money bills must emanate.
Because these beliefs have sufficient basis, the process of preparing the GAA needs thorough reform. To that end, a bill to reform to budget-making process needs to be filed, assuming that no move in that direction has yet been made.
Legislators are legitimate participants in the budget-making process. They have a right—nay, the responsibility—to pursue the needs of their constituents before the Executive branch of government, more specifically NEDA (National Economic and Development Authority) and DBM (Department of Budget and Management).
They have the right, and they need, to point out to the NEDA planners and to the DBM managers the projects that are of greatest value to their constituents. But this involvement in the making of the national budget should take place while the document is being drafted and prior to its presentation to the Legislature. Once the budget is presented to Congress, the task of legislations is limited to ensuring that the expenditure items items embodied in the budget are justified, correctly priced and adequately documented.
Scrutiny of the annual budget bill is clearly the legislative’s most important function, for the hopes and aspirations of the nation’s citizens for a life and embodied in the pages of the proposed bill. Legislators are at their best when, through hearings and other information-gathering means, they establish the soundness, legality cost-effectiveness of proposed expenditures.
The expenditures presented to them for scrutiny are the only expenditures that are legitimately covered by congressional determinative proceedings: Subsequent additions—are not part of the deal.
In the distant past the objects of public opprobrium were the CDF (Countrywide Development Fund) pork barrel allotments to the members of Congress. In the more recent past public disdain has been directed at the pork barrel payments associated with the disgraced Janet Lim Napoles, i.e., the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) pork slabs. Today the object of public anger are the insertions made into the newly approved 2019 GAA.
Criticism and adverse commentaries of this country’s budget-making process, no matter how trenchant and no matter how widespread, no longer suffice. The bad practices associated with the process are no longer bearable. Things have gotten out of control.
Total reform of the national-budgeting process is the order of the day. The Executive Department—NEDA and DBM—and Congress need to get together as soon as possible after the electoral exercise, which should result in the drafting of budget reform legislation.