(Eagle News)–House Deputy Speaker for Finance Luis Raymund Villafuerte has confirmed he moved for the withdrawal of the 2020 General Appropriations Bill, saying the bill was “prematurely filed.”
In justifying the withdrawal from the plenary of House Bill 4228 which was filed on Aug. 28 by the House committee on appropriations, Villafuerte noted that the presentation of the budget proposals of all government offices before the House panel “have yet to be completed at the time of House Bill 4228’s filing on first reading.”
“In fact, the remaining offices that have yet to present their 2020 budget proposals are expected to finish doing so by the end of this workweek yet—so how can the House appropriations committee submit House Bill 4228 without having heard the presentations of all government agencies covered by the proposed 2020 GAA (General Appropriations Act)?” he asked.
He added while the House leadership was “fully committed to having the 2020 GAB acted upon in a timely manner and for all committee and plenary deliberations on this bill fully transparent and in keeping with the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling against so-called pork barrel funds for legislators,” the legislative process “must not be done with undue haste or making a mockery of the House’s constitutional power of the purse.”
In fact, he said the “premature filing of HB 4228 goes against the very commitment of the House leadership to tackle the 2020 GAB—and all other legislative measures for that matter—in timely fashion and with full transparency from the committee to the plenary stages.”
“Besides, we have the whole of September and most of October to take up the national budget bill, so there is no need for us to act on it with undue haste,” he said.
Congressional insertions
Villafuerte added there were no congressional insertions, or “budgetary amendments that certain lawmakers insert on the sly after a consolidated GAB has already been passed by both chambers—a post-ratification process that the Supreme Court had struck down and which certain House leaders resorted to in the 17th Congress and that led to the delay in the approval of the 2019 budget.”
He said there was no consolidated GAB to speak of in the first place.
“There is no need for us to short-circuit the legislative process on the excuse that the House should pass the GAB soon enough to avoid a repeat of the 2019 budget delay,” he said.
The Department of Budget Management submitted the P4.1-trillion National Expenditure Program for 2020 to the House of Representatives and the Senate on August 20.
The House has said it was eyeing Oct. 4 as the deadline for the passage of the budget bill on third reading.
