2009/05/13

Bill being rushed vs budget impoundment

Butch Fernandez
Business Mirror

The Senate finance committee is consolidating a budget-impoundment bill that will prevent the Office of the President from withholding funds allocated in the annual budget and approved by Congress for various government departments and service agencies. Sen. Edgardo Angara, committee chairman, is likely to gain wide support in both chambers of Congress, but they still want to hear the positions of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the Freedom from Debt Coalition and Social Watch, among others, before endorsing the impoundment bill for plenary approval within the year.

The Senate finance committee is consolidating a budget-impoundment bill that will prevent the Office of the President from withholding funds allocated in the annual budget and approved by Congress for various government departments and service agencies.

Sen. Edgardo Angara, committee chairman, is likely to gain wide support in both chambers of Congress, but they still want to hear the positions of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the Freedom from Debt Coalition and Social Watch, among others, before endorsing the impoundment bill for plenary approval within the year.

Angara does not see President Arroyo standing against the bill, since the measure, once enacted into law, “would have restored constitutional balance” between the Executive branch and the Legislature.

He explained that the budget department’s practice of withholding fund releases that Congress has appropriated for the various agencies of the government, and then rechanneling the withheld funds to favored departments, should not be allowed.

The Department of Budget and Management, he said, is, in effect, “not only undoing what Congress approved but renders the budget meaningless.”

“That’s why we hope Malacañang Palace would not see this impoundment bill in an unkind light just because it was sponsored by opposition senators,” Angara said.

He said the finance committee will call at least two more hearings on separate impoundment bills filed by opposition Sens. Benigno Aquino Jr. and Mar Roxas II and administration Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr. before consolidating the three bills for plenary consideration.

Under Aquino’s Senate Bill 3121, impoundment refers to the refusal of the President, for whatever reason, to release funds appropriated by Congress.

Aquino pointed out that his bill seeks to increase congressional oversight and to “limit Executive influence over specific appropriations in the budget law.”

On the other hand, Senate Bill 2995, filed by Roxas, seeks to “regulate the power of the President to rescind or reserve expenditure of appropriations authorized by Congress.”

Senate Bill 810 introduced by Revilla proposes to “establish a procedure for controlling executive impoundment of funds.”

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