For the minority bloc in the House of Representatives, the signing of the P1.645 trillion national budget for 2011 by President Benigno Aquino III is not a matter worth celebrating. “We might as well have a requiem for the demise of the congressional power to appropriate public funds," House minority leader Edcel Lagman said in a press statement. The Albay representative said President Aquino vetoed even traditional provisions in the 2011 General Appropriations Act, which allowed Congress to assume its oversight function over the Executive’s implementation of the national budget. “This completed the emasculation of the independent Congressional power to enact the annual appropriations," he said. In most democracies, Congress has the power of the purse, even if the initial draft is proposed by the Executive. But according to Lagman, the budget that the President signed on Monday was a “subservient copycat of the National Expenditure Program (NEP) Malacañang submitted to the House of Representatives earlier this year. “The Office of the President did not only propose the national budget through the (NEP). It also virtually appropriated the national budget through a rubberstamp majority in the Congress — both in the House and in the Senate," he said.
Aquino’s allies in Congress, Lagman said, were able to successfully have the 2011 budget approved with minimal realignments and an exact total of P1.645 trillion as reflected in the President’s original submission. “There is a categorical and persistent instruction from Malacañang to have the NEP untouched and undiminished, effectively subverting the power of the Congress, particularly the House, over the public purse as enshrined and mandated by the Constitution," he said. As a result of what he claimed was Malacañang’s “undue and omnipresent interference in the budget process," not a single centavo was cut from the original proposal budget —especially the controversial P21 billion Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program and a P15 billion Public-Private Partnership hazy outlay, among other huge lump sums. According to Lagman, Congress was able to reduce the President’s budget by P400 million in 2010, by P300 million in 2009, by P300 million in 2008, and by P200 million in 2007. For 2011, both the House and the Senate realigned only P2.306 billion — much less than one percent of the 1.645 trillion budget, the lawmaker said. “Compare this with the previous years when Congress truly exercised its plenary power of appropriation with the following realignments: P67.1 billion in 2010; P56.5 billion in 2009; P38.5 billion in 2008; and P20.5 billion in 2007," he added.
Meager, errant and unwarranted Even worse, according to the solon, was that the meager realignments in the 2011 national budget were “errant and unwarranted". He cited the P750 million slashed from the school building program, which he said already suffered from a yawning lack of classrooms. Lagman said the amount was realigned for 5,000 additional teacher positions, which should have been funded from the CCT since education is an allied program. He also questioned the P200 million-slash “family health and family planning" budget received, with reduced it from P931 million to P731 million. “It should be underscored that the bulk of the original outlay was not for the purchase of contraceptives," the solon pointed out. What happened to all the proposed individual amendments of solons, who had been told to submit their proposals to the Committee on Appropriations?, he also asked. “Not a single significant amendment found fruition in the GAA, except the proposal of the Minority for the creation of a Congressional Oversight Committee on the CCT and the realignment of 2011 savings from the CCT to the Department of Health and the Department of Education, which were both unfortunately and improvidently effectively scuttled by the Senate," Lagman said.
Reclaiming the power of the purse In the past, groups like the
Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) and the
Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI) have challenged Congress to reclaim its constitutional power of the purse in the face of unregulated fiscal powers of the Executive Department. The ABI is a network of 100 citizens’ groups that scrutinizes, every year, both the national budget and the budget process. Calling itself a "peoples’ crusade for a participatory, transparent and accountable budget system," it also proposes an alternative national budget with increased appropriations for social development. Both groups have encouraged the participation of civic groups in the budget process. The FDC, has been proposing the amendment of the Revised Administrative Code of 1987 (Executive Order 292) to remove provisions that allow the automatic appropriation for debt service (Section 31-B), and the presidential powers of impoundment (Section 38) and realignment of savings (Section 39).
— DM/KBK 
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