QUEZON City, Philippines (Eagle News) — The Senate leadership denied that there were pork barrel insertions in the 2017 budget.
Senate President Aquilino Pimentel made the denial after Senator Panfilo Lacson stated that the 2017 budget included hundreds of millions of pesos set aside for projects of senators.
Pimentel insisted that senators identifying projects before the approval of the national budget was not against the Constitution.
Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles also denied there were insertion of pork barrel, and said that Lacson is confused about the issue.
“There is no PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) in the budget. There are no post-enactment projects in the budget. I think that Senator Lacson is confused about this issue,” Nograles said.
He also said that all the projects were already evaluated by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) before the National Expenditure Program (NEP) was finalized and submitted to the House of Representatives.
“From its inception, the projects and programs have been itemized and spelled out clearly and specifically. From the House all the way to the Senate, the DBM monitors every movement of the budget process to ensure there is no violation of the SC decision against pork barrel,” Nograles said.
“If anything, we have made doubly sure that projects and programs are even more specific so there will be no room at all for post-enactment. All our hearings and deliberations will bear this out — which have always been transparent and open. The budget book itself is a public document open to scrutiny by anyone,” Nograles added.