By Amado P. Macasaet
The General Appropriations Act is specific on the budget of each agency. The money is spent for a specific purpose. There is nothing in any law that requires an agency to save on its budget.
The necessity is to spend the money judiciously. In so doing or at least trying, some money is left unspent at the end of the fiscal year. That part of the budget is savings.
The first order is to find out whether or not the agency completed its task with its budget. If it did and is left with some savings, the agency is presumed efficient. If the projects are not implemented in spite of having mountain of cash from the budget, the head of the agency should be taken to task, in fact fired, for showing malignant signs of inefficiency and incompetence.
The unspent budget should be returned to the National Treasury to be part of the next appropriation, not to be distributed among officials and employees as bonuses and other forms of financial benefits. They are not rewards for inefficiency. They do not deserve the money in the sense that the funds come from the tax taxpayers. Only agencies that save a portion of their budgets get the benefits.
Those who spend all of the money wisely and judiciously never even get a thank you note from anybody.
On the other hand, if the head of the agency accomplishes his mission but is still left with savings, he must be rewarded for knowing how to spend taxpayers’ money. Still the savings must be returned to the National Treasury.
The President made a decision in his country’s interest when he ordered savings should not be spent as financial benefits of the head of the agency and his employees.
But he made a mistake, a very serious one, when he pooled the savings to form a huge fund under the Disbursement Acceleration Program. The money is not appropriated in the General Appropriations Act.
He cannot spend, even for the national interest, money not allowed by law. Thus, the Supreme Court ruled the DAP as unconstitutional. The end does not justify the means.
Here is Abigail Valte, deputy presidential spokesperson saying there should be a law, special or otherwise, covering the use of savings. She is finding a way to dress another DAP with sheep’s clothing. She is proposing the circumvention of the ruling of unconstitutionality of the DAP..
The hidden motive of using savings allowed by a new law is laid bare by the simple fact that the Office of the President proposes the annual budget. Whatever amounts he feels the country would need for the coming fiscal period should be so stated in the proposed appropriations act.
The proposed budget for 2015 contains lump sum appropriation of more than P500 billion. It does not have a specific purpose. Malacañang lumped together a huge sum which, like the DAP, is completely at the discretion of the President. Is the Palace trying to fatten the lump sum with savings that may be used only by the President, needless to say, by authority of a new law?
Any amount described as lump sum in the appropriations law, can be misspent. So can the savings, as the President did with the DAP.
The timing is suspicious. Nobody in Malacañang ever thought of the necessity of a law covering savings in the past four years. If they had thought of it earlier, so much could have been done with the money for public welfare.
The idea of having a law on the use of savings comes too late. In the first place, there is hardly any moral way of legalizing theft. More importantly, savings should not be encouraged for any purpose. The money, so appropriated in the budget, must all be judiciously spent for the purpose so stated.
They want it a year before the national elections in 2016.
A law covering the use of savings abets abuse of Presidential powers. State agencies can be given large sums far beyond what they need just to make sure some savings are recorded at the end of the fiscal period.
The President then lays his hands on a fat sum and spends it the way he wants to, political benefits or gains included.
We thought the President backtracked as he should on the DAP to comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court. He said in his fifth State of the Nation Address that he would seek a supplemental budget so he may not be stopped from pursing his goals for public interest using savings.
Incidentally, the reported P50 million given to each senator who voted for the conviction of Renato C. Corona allegedly came from the DAP. The disbursement is immoral. It was a reward to lawmakers who did their jobs, probably at the behest of the President or on the promise of P50 million per lawmaker who will vote for conviction.
This is corruption that President Aquino wants to stamp out as a way to show his people the substance of his “matuwid na daan” governance policy.
On top of the supplemental budget is the huge lump sum of P500 billion abused by nearly all administrations probably excluding that of the President’s mother. Now the Palace wants a law legitimizing the use of savings, not by anybody but, again, by the President of the Republic of the Philippines.
The BIR and Customs burn the midnight oil to shore up the finances of government. Why should they raise their tax efforts to produce more revenue only to be saved and used by the Office of the President under an amended law?
Since the Office of the President proposes the budget, the Executive branch should be able to figure out the amount needed for efficient governance. Why rely on savings that need not be explained as in the case of DAP?
The idea works fine on a household that tries to save whatever little it can to secure the future of the children and old age of the parents.
But savings taxpayers’ money so the President can spend it is the most oxymoronic practice in the fiscal sector. It reeks with the stench of anomalies related to politics.
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Email:amadomacasaet@yahoo.com
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