THE P5.768 trillion national budget for 2024 is unconstitutional because of the insertion by lawmakers of P449.5 billion unprogrammed funds which President Marcos Jr. did not veto when he signed the General Appropriations Act (GAA), a leader of the opposition at the House of Representatives said yesterday.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said Republic Act No. 11975 must be challenged before the Supreme Court (SC) “to cleanse the GAA of a fatal defect and give guidance to the Congress and the President in the future budget seasons.”
“This year’s General Appropriations Act (GAA) which took effect on 01 January 2024 suffers a constitutional infirmity insofar as the bicameral conference committee inserted P449.5 billion in excess of the unprogrammed appropriations of P281.9 billion recommended by the President in the national budget or the National Expenditure Program (NEP),” Lagman said in a statement.
The veteran lawyer-lawmaker said the President’s “utter failure” to veto the P449.5 billion unprogrammed funds in the 2024 national budget “aggravates” its constitutional defect.
Lagman pointed out that the Constitution unequivocally provides in Section 25 (1) of Article VI that “the Congress may not increase the appropriations recommended by the President for the operation of the government as specified in the budget” or the NEP.
Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel III has earlier questioned the P455 billion insertion made by lawmakers during the bicameral conference committee discussions to iron out the differing provisions between the House and Senate versions of the national budget.
Pimentel said from P281.9 billion in the NEP, the unprogrammed appropriations was bloated to P731.4 billion in the final version of the budget bill.
The prohibition on increasing the appropriations recommended by the President, he said, covers both the programmed appropriations, which have available budget sources, and the unprogrammed appropriations, which only have contingent budget sources “limited to the release of new loan proceeds for foreign assisted projects; revenue collections from new tax laws; and increase in non-tax revenue collections over target.”
Lagman said that since the 2024 NEP recommended a total of P5.768 trillion for programmed appropriations and P289.1 billion for unprogrammed appropriations, “the total of both cannot be breached by the Congress.”
“It is well settled that when the Constitution does not distinguish, we must not distinguish. Verily, since the Constitution does not distinguish between the programmed appropriations and the unprogrammed appropriations with respect to the congressional ban, the ceiling of both cannot be exceeded by the Congress,” he stressed.
The lawmaker added: “Through the years, the errant interpretation is that only the totality of the programmed appropriations cannot be increased by the Congress so much so that it is the unprogrammed appropriations which have been invariably increased annually to accommodate even partisan and pet projects which are subsequently funded and released during the fiscal year under the suspicious, or even spurious, claim that contingent funding has been realized.”
What is worse, Lagman said, is the scheme of transferring funded projects to the unprogrammed appropriations to accommodate pet projects which are then assured of funding.
“The unprogrammed appropriations have become the sanctuary of partisan and pet projects where funding and releases for implementation would even antedate programmed appropriations,” he said.
