Barefoot in the pork

OUR “DAANG MATUWID” topic today is pork.

Last week, former Senator Panfilo Lacson unfurled his latest red-hot discovery about the Aquino (Part II) administration: It implanted in the 2015 budget some P424 billion in pork.

The technical term for pork is lump sum appropriation, a whole heap of money without any breakdown of the expense items, leaving its uses up to the discretion of the executive.

In two monumental decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that PDAF and DAP, the outdated terms for congressional and executive pork, were illegal.

With full media coverage, Lacson revealed that he and his team uncovered those lump sums in 11 out of 21 line agencies of the executive —and still counting.

The guys here in my barangay never knew Lacson as a finance wiz type, but the “team” seemed to have deep knowledge of the budgetary process.

From what I heard, the Lacson team got directions from someone once connected with the Department of Budget and Management, possibly a former budget secretary.

In other words, Lacson and the team knew what they talked about regarding the 2015 budget.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, the campaign manager of the Liberal Party in the 2010 elections, reacted that the budget always needed “special purpose funds,” or SPF, for unforeseen troubles like calamities.

The entire P424 billion just for disasters?

The thing was, when Lacson bared such an amount of pork, he did not refer to the SPF.

For instance, the team discovered that the administration recycled budget codes, taking them from certain agencies and reusing them for projects of legislators many times over.

The Lacson disclosure simply pointed to only one thing: The administration fixed the 2015 budget with outright deception.

From what I gathered, when the administration pushed for the 2015 budget, it enjoyed the support of both congressmen and senators.

In the Lower House, only 18 congressmen voted against the 2015 budget and 30 abstained —out of its 292 members.

In short, the 2015 budget rocked! With the huge “lump sums” in the 2015 budget, it would not be hard to imagine why!

Sen. Sergio Osmeña III, who was adopted by the Liberal Party in the 2010 elections, also divulged the existence of pork disguised as lump sum.

He even cited figures: P200 million for each of certain senators, and for the heavyweights in the administration, P2 billion each.

The Senate point man in the crafting of the 2015 budget was the two-termer Sen. Francis Escudero, finance committee chair, who declared nothing illegal in the whole thing.

And we thought its legality or illegality would be up to the Supreme Court to decide—not the man who masterminded the crafting—since the Lacson team already filed a case.

Escudero tried to justify the lump sums as just temporary and only for the sake of flexibility.

Standing on their own, barefoot and all, were the Palace boys who declared that Lacson was nothing but an alarmist.

Everybody knew that the Palace boys were masters of ad hominem, plus of course circulus in demonstrando!

As the Palace boys put it, Lacson had nothing to worry about the lump sums in the budget because our leader Benigno Simeon, aka BS, already instituted safeguards against the misuse of our hard-earned tax money through his “reform program.”

In other words, the Palace boys deployed the bazooka to attack the Lacson exposé, using once again the “daang matuwid” argument.

It was like the dog chasing his tail riding a carousel circling around a rotunda.

It would not matter much to the guys down here in my barangay, say, if the maneuverings of the Aquino (Part II) administration in the budget process were legal or illegal, done just for the sake of flexibility in government spending, secured by the knowledge that there was enough safeguard, or any other brand of soap.

The question was simple: Was there or was there not pork in the 2015 budget, hidden by the administration on purpose to deceive the people?

At a dizzying amount of P2.6 trillion, the 2015 budget was not a joke at all.

To break it all down, the initial findings of P424 billion in “lump sums,” represent 16 percent of the budget, and at the usual “cut” of 20 percent of the project costs in the congressional insertions, the amount of kickback could easily reach P90 billion.

And the projects in the insertions would be the typical pathetic “solar drier facilities” (i.e. a small cemented area for drying the palay harvest, doubling as dance floor during fiestas).

To think, the administration has already been famous in the local and world investment circles for “underspending,” particularly on much needed economic infrastructure such as superhighways, flyovers, airports, seaports, classrooms and hospitals.

It was estimated that the Aquino (Part II) already posted “underspending” of about P590 billion so far. And then we would have this P424-billion in frivolous spending in pork.

Just imagine what life-changing development that some P424 billion could do.

Whether the administration, the senators and the congressmen would admit it or not, the administration just had to use pork to control Congress.

The question has always been, for what?

The Aquino (Part II) administration never pushed in the legislature some politically suicidal measures such as the trimming of the untouchable bureaucracy or the overhaul of the tax system—some tough measures that could perhaps raise a bit our quality of life from its barefoot bottom.