Rush to Approve: National Budget for 2020

PASSED IN a rush by the House, Senate rushes to approve.

THE PHP4.1 trillion 2020 General Appropriations Act has been flagged by several lawmakers for its questionable insertions as well as drastic cuts for health and education.

But the budget bill breezed through another hurdle, as noted in reports.  The Senate brought its plenary debates to a close on November 20 after only nine days of discussion. Senate President Vicente Sotto III may have claimed earlier that the bill needed close scrutiny. But media may not have reported on how well or badly Congress has done this job.

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto, former chair of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, pointed out the lack of transparency in some “unprogrammed appropriations.” But apart from what Recto had to say, there was little else reported on such appropriations.

The period given to amendments, realignment, augmentation and other revisions which is set to start this week will reveal whether the senators can check any fiscal excesses or even irregularities in the national budget.

CMFR has already noted in a monitor in September that the media had simply recorded what was said about dubious allocations and reported that these were approved swiftly anyway. Routine reporting doled out in parts fails to focus public attention on important things. Without analysis from those tracking the budget, the public will not appreciate how misappropriations can have broad impact on their lives. Neither can the ordinary person see how a poorly crafted and unexamined budget opens wide the opportunities for corruption.

Seemingly unable to keep up with the Senate debates, the media did not attempt to draw the big picture of the lack, the excess, the imbalance in the appropriation of taxpayers’ money to various services or programs; to highlight the increased billions for intelligence and the drastic cuts on funds for hospitals and schools; or the higher salary increases for law enforcers and lower than expected for teachers and nurses. 

CMFR monitored the leading Manila broadsheets (Manila Bulletin, Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Philippine Star); the primetime newscasts (ABS-CBN 2’s TV Patrol, CNN Philippines’ News Night, GMA-7’s 24 Oras and TV5’s Aksyon) and some online news sites from November 11 to 20, 2019.

Missing the big picture

Because the media report on the budget process each year, most editors tend to leave the reporting to journalists assigned to the Congress beat who, according to custom, file their stories as breaking news. This approach does not depict a broad and comprehensive understanding of how a budget fails, when it is poorly crafted and finally, when it is inadequately examined.

While reports tracked the movement of the budget through the legislative mill, these failed to get into the significant details, such as the budget not providing funds to sustain existing government programs, as well as new ones provided by recent laws.

Most of the accounts failed to highlight the significant imbalance in the allocations.

While the Senate increased the Department of Health’s (DOH) outlay for human resources, the amount still falls short of the PHP16 billion requested by the department for 26,389 health workers. Other programs that also lack funding include the rehabilitation of schools damaged by calamities and salary hikes for teachers and nurses.

Politicians scored the gaps in the health and education sectors, two fundamental services to the people. The same noted with greater restraint the generous share of the Office of the President (OP).

While some agencies are scraping the barrel for much needed funding, the OP intelligence funds have been increased to a whopping PHP4.5 billion. More than half of the office’s budget is allocated for intelligence. As “intelligence” funds cannot be audited, they may well serve the same purpose as “pork.”

A Rappler report published in August 2019 looked into the sizable hike in the president’s intelligence funds. Rappler noted that since the Duterte administration crafted its first budget in 2017, the OP has been allotted a total of PHP2.5 billion for its intelligence funds. The Aquino administration kept a much lower budget of PHP500 million a year. Rappler also compared the intelligence budget of the OP to other government agencies. Bar graphs showed that the OP’s 2020 intelligence fund is almost twice as much as the combined intelligence funds of the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Department of Interior Local Governance (DILG).

Unfortunately, Duterte’s hold on Congress prevents the legislative branch to check executive excesses. Critics in Congress have been overwhelmed by the surge to approve.

The glaring discrepancy did not prevent the Senate from approving the proposed PHP8.2 billion budget of the OP in just over three minutes. According to an Inquirer report, “Not a single question was raised when Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, former presidential aide, presented the budget proposal of the OP.”

Some media reports may have shown up the problems of the budget, but on the whole most reporters have simply gone along just reporting developments with little analysis; with little effort to plumb the onerous features of the budget.

The avoidance of a deadlock that would hold the budget process is understandable. But it would be the duty of the press to highlight the excessive grants of privilege to the president’s office. 

It is important for those who report on the budget not to reduce coverage to a political game, as most of the questions come from the opposition, these are seen only as being obstructionist.

It would help if the budget were reported by a team which included those who in other beats. The budget which funds all areas of government should be seen from the perspective of the departments severely affected by the cuts.

Media should also look for other sources, experts who had worked on budgets in the past, either in the DBM or those in the civil society who have made it a point to study the budgetary process so it can function in the service of the people.

Some editorial guidance can bring this about so the press can help the public to understand one of the most important aspects of governance.