GMA can still veto restored pork barrel
GMA can still veto restored pork barrel
Updated 03:59am (Mla time) Nov 22, 2004
By Neal Cruz
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
PERHAPS, the story was too good to be true: Malacañang would cut the congressional pork barrel by at least 40 percent, and Congress would revert back to line-item budgeting to prevent half of the budgeted funds from going to kickbacks and being wasted in substandard public works projects. Perhaps, the public was being too gullible in believing the words of the President, the Speaker of the House and the congressmen that they were reducing the pork budget because of the fiscal crisis.
As all rotten things eventually stink, the truth is out: legislators will get their pork barrel in full-not a centavo less. Happy days are here again (for the members of Congress, but sad days for taxpayers). After all, the President herself has declared that the fiscal crisis is over. That was the signal to dive for the treasury like predators tearing into the carcass of their victim, or like swine digging their snouts into slop. If the President can spend tens of millions of scarce dollars traipsing all over the Americas, why should the legislators control their own greed and refrain from getting their share of the loot?
Well then, if the fiscal crisis is over and the government doesn't have to tighten its belt anymore, then there is no more need to increase taxes and to impose new ones. Why burden the people when it is not called for? Why ask the people to contribute to the Bayanihan Fund when there is no more crisis?
Even Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin, who had submitted the budget with 40 percent of the pork barrel slashed, has now changed her tune. She now has good words for the much-maligned pork.
"I think the root cause of that (allegations that the fund has been abused and a major source of corruption) is the assumption that all pork barrel funds are lost to corruption which I think is a very unfair assumption," Boncodin said.
The President and her spokespersons have chosen not to comment.
But this will test the mettle of the President to push for reforms, reduce the budget deficit and the foreign debt, and nurse the economy back to health. But all indications point to the fact that she is a quack doctor, a fake who will lead her patient to his death. It looks like she will just lean back and do nothing so as not to displease the lawmakers. Why is she so scared of them when they are more rotten than her?
But if she is really sincere to push fiscal reforms, she can still do something even if Congress passes a budget bill with the pork barrel intact. She can still resort to line-item veto of pork hidden in specific appropriations. Congress cannot increase the total national budget submitted by the budget department, so the House must have taken the funds to restore the pork barrel in full from the appropriations of some other departments. What those departments are, nobody except the congressmen know yet.
Fortunately, the budget will still pass through the Senate which, hopefully, will restore sanity to it. The people have a little more respect for the senators in general (with some noteworthy exceptions, of course). But will the Senate live up to the people's expectations?
* * *
That was fast. On the same day that our column-about the plight of a disabled retiree being given the runaround at the Government Service Insurance System-came out, I got a faxed reply from Alex M. Valencerina, GSIS senior vice president for field operations.
Thank you very much for calling our attention to the plight of GSIS pensioner Mrs. Nenita U. Socrates, he wrote. "Immediately after reading it, we conducted a thorough background check to determine what we can do to help her.
"Based on our inquiries here at the home office, we learned that, indeed, Ms Socrates sent GSIS president Winston Garcia a handwritten letter last Nov. 1 asking for help. We received the letter, postmarked Nov. 4, last Nov. 10 (almost one week later; how slow) before it was forwarded to the concerned unit (the Pension Accounts Department) for proper action.
"Unfortunately, we were still preparing our reply when your column came up. We offer no excuses for the delay. It is just that, in an agency managing 1.5 million members with multiple accounts and transactions, things sometimes get out of hand, especially in the midst of an ongoing reform program which we are currently undertaking.
"Part of this program is to update the membership profile of all our individual members, pensioners and retirees and to feed these valuable data into our computerized database, a very basic process that unfortunately was never put in place during the past GSIS administrations.
"The systems-generated letter we sent Ms Socrates informing her that her pension would be suspended if she failed to update her records is simply part of our procedures to improve our database because, in the process of updating our records, we found out that the GSIS has been paying out pensions to members and retirees who have long passed away as we had no effective way of checking the actual physical conditions of our pensioners all over the country. Thus, we now require them to physically report to our offices at least once a year to secure or renew their identification cards.
"For pensioners who are unable to physically go to our offices, as in the case of Ms Socrates, we have a home visit program. As of this writing, GSIS personnel from the Quezon City branch are on the way to visit her and facilitate the issuance or renewal of her ID to avoid any disruption to her pension benefits.
"We have also called Ms Socrates to offer our apologies and to assure her that she will continue to receive her pension checks regularly."
Updated 03:59am (Mla time) Nov 22, 2004
By Neal Cruz
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 22, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
PERHAPS, the story was too good to be true: Malacañang would cut the congressional pork barrel by at least 40 percent, and Congress would revert back to line-item budgeting to prevent half of the budgeted funds from going to kickbacks and being wasted in substandard public works projects. Perhaps, the public was being too gullible in believing the words of the President, the Speaker of the House and the congressmen that they were reducing the pork budget because of the fiscal crisis.
As all rotten things eventually stink, the truth is out: legislators will get their pork barrel in full-not a centavo less. Happy days are here again (for the members of Congress, but sad days for taxpayers). After all, the President herself has declared that the fiscal crisis is over. That was the signal to dive for the treasury like predators tearing into the carcass of their victim, or like swine digging their snouts into slop. If the President can spend tens of millions of scarce dollars traipsing all over the Americas, why should the legislators control their own greed and refrain from getting their share of the loot?
Well then, if the fiscal crisis is over and the government doesn't have to tighten its belt anymore, then there is no more need to increase taxes and to impose new ones. Why burden the people when it is not called for? Why ask the people to contribute to the Bayanihan Fund when there is no more crisis?
Even Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin, who had submitted the budget with 40 percent of the pork barrel slashed, has now changed her tune. She now has good words for the much-maligned pork.
"I think the root cause of that (allegations that the fund has been abused and a major source of corruption) is the assumption that all pork barrel funds are lost to corruption which I think is a very unfair assumption," Boncodin said.
The President and her spokespersons have chosen not to comment.
But this will test the mettle of the President to push for reforms, reduce the budget deficit and the foreign debt, and nurse the economy back to health. But all indications point to the fact that she is a quack doctor, a fake who will lead her patient to his death. It looks like she will just lean back and do nothing so as not to displease the lawmakers. Why is she so scared of them when they are more rotten than her?
But if she is really sincere to push fiscal reforms, she can still do something even if Congress passes a budget bill with the pork barrel intact. She can still resort to line-item veto of pork hidden in specific appropriations. Congress cannot increase the total national budget submitted by the budget department, so the House must have taken the funds to restore the pork barrel in full from the appropriations of some other departments. What those departments are, nobody except the congressmen know yet.
Fortunately, the budget will still pass through the Senate which, hopefully, will restore sanity to it. The people have a little more respect for the senators in general (with some noteworthy exceptions, of course). But will the Senate live up to the people's expectations?
* * *
That was fast. On the same day that our column-about the plight of a disabled retiree being given the runaround at the Government Service Insurance System-came out, I got a faxed reply from Alex M. Valencerina, GSIS senior vice president for field operations.
Thank you very much for calling our attention to the plight of GSIS pensioner Mrs. Nenita U. Socrates, he wrote. "Immediately after reading it, we conducted a thorough background check to determine what we can do to help her.
"Based on our inquiries here at the home office, we learned that, indeed, Ms Socrates sent GSIS president Winston Garcia a handwritten letter last Nov. 1 asking for help. We received the letter, postmarked Nov. 4, last Nov. 10 (almost one week later; how slow) before it was forwarded to the concerned unit (the Pension Accounts Department) for proper action.
"Unfortunately, we were still preparing our reply when your column came up. We offer no excuses for the delay. It is just that, in an agency managing 1.5 million members with multiple accounts and transactions, things sometimes get out of hand, especially in the midst of an ongoing reform program which we are currently undertaking.
"Part of this program is to update the membership profile of all our individual members, pensioners and retirees and to feed these valuable data into our computerized database, a very basic process that unfortunately was never put in place during the past GSIS administrations.
"The systems-generated letter we sent Ms Socrates informing her that her pension would be suspended if she failed to update her records is simply part of our procedures to improve our database because, in the process of updating our records, we found out that the GSIS has been paying out pensions to members and retirees who have long passed away as we had no effective way of checking the actual physical conditions of our pensioners all over the country. Thus, we now require them to physically report to our offices at least once a year to secure or renew their identification cards.
"For pensioners who are unable to physically go to our offices, as in the case of Ms Socrates, we have a home visit program. As of this writing, GSIS personnel from the Quezon City branch are on the way to visit her and facilitate the issuance or renewal of her ID to avoid any disruption to her pension benefits.
"We have also called Ms Socrates to offer our apologies and to assure her that she will continue to receive her pension checks regularly."
posted by Dante at 11:03 PM
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