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By Maricel V. Cruz Reporter
THE House of Representatives on
Wednesday began plenary debates on the Palace-proposed
P1.227-trillion national budget for 2008, the biggest in the
country’s history.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, chairman
of the House Committee on Appropriations, and other authors of the
proposed General Appropriations Act of 2008 (House Bill 2454)
defended the proposed expenditures for government agencies and
offices in a succession of sponsorship speeches.
Lagman admitted that the budget
bill is “[not perfect], like all legislative proposals.”
“Thus, your committee on
appropriations welcomes perfecting amendments to augment, for
example, the allocations for education, health, and agriculture,
among others,” Lagman said.
“We hasten our word of caution,
however, that more money does not always mean more service or better
performance. An augmentation may instead buy more seminar or
travels, rather than additional textbooks, better health care or
more rice on the table,” he added.
Lagman underscored the need for
government to review its policies on debt service and the proposed
repeal of the law on automatic appropriation on debt service.
Lagman acknowledged that of the
P1.227-trillion national budget, an amount equal to more than 50
percent of its total or P624.092 billion, will be spent only for
debt servicing. Some P297.751 billion will go to interest payments
and P328.341 billion to amortization of the principal.
“We must trust the innate
responsibility of legislators to determine what debts must be paid.
We must never allow our country to again suffer the inordinately
expensive folly of the useless and fraudulent loan for the
construction of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP),” Lagman
pointed out.
He bared that the government has
paid a total of P64.794 billion for the mothballed facility for more
than two decades or from 1986 to the present. The total amount, he
added, is more than the combined appropriations for several
departments like health (P16.259 billion); agriculture (P23.756
billion); and transportation and communication (P23.339 billion) for
2008.
Lamentably, Lagman added, the
BNPP folly is similar to a project where the government purchased
“substandard” medical waste incinerators for 26 government
hospitals with a P503.65 million loan from the Bank of Austria.
The use of the incinerators
had been banned under the Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999, but the
government continues to pay for it.
“Unfortunately, we cannot stop
these off-budget payments without first repealing the law on
automatic [appropriations]… We cannot strike down automatic
appropriation through the General Appropriations Act,” Lagman
said.
“Nevertheless, we can express
the strong sense of Congress against the payment of tainted and
worthless loans through appropriate special provisions in the
General Appropriations Act,” he pointed out.
Lagman called on colleagues to
“expeditiously deliberate and approve” the budget bill to
prevent the re-enactment next year of the 2007 GAA.
Speaker Jose de Venecia had
earlier committed to have the 2008 budget bill and other priority
measures, like the cheaper medicines bill, approved by October 12
before Congress goes on recess.
“We have our commitment to our
people. There will be no re-enacted budget next year. We are all
working doubly hard to pass the crucial social legislation [that
makes] quality medicines affordable and accessible to our poor
masses,” de Venecia said.
Meanwhile, Opposition Rep.
Teofisto Guingona 3rd, together with the nongovernment organization
Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), called on Congress to strike out
some P1.3 billion worth of payments to “illegitimate debts.”
FDC, a debt watchdog, identified
some of these “illegitimate debts” as: World Bank-funded
textbook project; the Austrian Medical Waste Project; Chinese-funded
North Luzon Railways Project; World Back Small Coconut Farmers
Development Project; and the defunct Telepono sa Barangay Project.
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