“If government were a corporation, it would be bankrupt. That is the painful truth”
“Walang batas na perpekto.” Senate President Escudero declared in defense of the budget that Congress just passed, after “laboring” over the differences between their version and that of the House.
It’s a case of winners and losers, the standard explanation for policy decisions. They win, the people lose.
Laboring, if that is what they try to make us believe, showing TV footages of their “deliberations” while secretly agreeing to the sharing of spoils.
In the previous budget, the bicameral conference committee stealthily did the senators a Houdini act. They appropriated AKAP for themselves and juggled funds into what are called the unprogrammed allocations, while the senators were left only with their AICS, MAIP and other slabs of the pork they share with their lower House counterparts.
Now the senators scrapped AKAP in their version of the budget, only to agree in the bicam to restore it, albeit with some reduction for “pampa-pogi” optics, but this time, with them partaking of the ayuda pie. Senator Grace Poe and Rep. Elizalde Co must be feeling mighty proud of their magnum opus, the 2025 GAA.
From AKAP for the HoR, it has been apportioned more “wisely” which really means “ano, kayo lang ang mga anak ng Diyos?”, so 5 billion for the senators, and 21 billion for the congressmen, subject of course to how their leadership decides who gets what. “Wa-is” not wise.
The juggling this time required snipping here and there, so there will be some for “disguised pork,” whether hard as added to the DPWH (mostly flood control make-shifts that do not control floods while the “juices” go into the pockets of our legislators?) or soft as in the different permutations of ayuda.
After the DAP scandal of PNoy’s time which convicted underlings of three celebrated senators, two of whom have been re-elected by the forgive and forget voters, with the Supreme Court declaring these pork barrel funds illegal, Congress immediately went back to becoming “wa-is,” thus transforming ours into an Ayuda Republic.
Now everything is a calamity requiring ayuda, whether floods that flood control projects worsened, or the COVID pestilence, unemployment, health emergencies, and ways to help the low-salaried workers to cope with inflation, much of which is caused by government neglect itself.
AICS, MAIP, TUPAD, and AKAP, manna from a government in aid of re-election.
So there will be cuts in Education (DepEd and our SUCS), Health, DOST, as well as Agriculture (did not Senadora Cynthia say “puro kayo research, wala namang nangyayari?”) and all the efforts that would arm our “saling-lahi” with a fighting chance for their future.
Even the oldest form of ayuda, the conditional cash transfer now called 4Ps, which has sustained poor families in exchange for putting their children in public schools, has not been spared. 50 billion cut off the 4Ps program, with the assurance that they can get it back from “unprogrammed” allocations, or money from unexpected revenue increments.
Where in God’s name will that come from? Will Customs earn much more while inflation cuts consumer appetite for more imports?
Will BIR plug the loopholes in their VAT collections, as well as the huge discounts amounting to 88 billion pesos where corrupt LGU officials certify able-bodied as PWDs ?
Is anything sacred in the Ayuda Republic, where corruption flows from top officialdom to the lowest rung of government personnel?
Philhealth has excess funds, amounting to anywhere from 440 to 600 billion, so Congress deprives them of the subsidy they wanted. Doctors like Minguita Padilla and economists like Cielo Magno decry the de-prioritization of “universal” healthcare, but why in God’s name does Philhealth have a surplus of unutilized funds in the first place?
Now comes the revelation that they will spend 138 million for their Christmas parties? Wrong, Philhealth says. It’s not for Christmas, it’s for our 30th anniversary celebration.
Mga p…..i ninyo!!! What is there to celebrate in your inefficient history?
Why doesn’t Congress and all our executives just tell us the truth?
That we are allocating 6.3 trillion for expenses while our revenues can only bring in 4.5 trillion, maybe less as consumer spending goes down in 2025?
If government were a corporation, it would be bankrupt. That is the painful truth.
But it will always find ways and means, until our creditors say enough is enough, and, like Maynilad, cuts off the “gripo”?
But no one in government says, we cannot sustain this spending. Let us cut down on useless expenditures, especially abstaining from pork?
That our officials will not do, because “taba” is what lubricates the wheels of their greed.
