THE leader of the minority bloc in the House of Representatives on Monday challenged the small committee of lawmakers to uphold the supremacy of Congress over the enactment of the national budget when they incorporate amendments in the proposed 2012 budget.

“No Malacañang-sponsored budgetary outlay is sacrosanct as to be spared from the scalpel which the Congress ought to wield to independently exercise its ascendant power over appropriations.  The challenge to the small committee is to adopt amendments upholding the supremacy of Congress over the enactment of the national budget,” Minority Leader and Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said in a statement.

The committee was composed to do the amendments in the proposed 2012 budget following its approval on second reading by the House on September 16. The five-member committee is headed by appropriations chairman and Cavite Rep. Joseph Emilio Abaya. Its members are Negros Oriental Rep. Jocelyn Limkaichong, Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. and Ilocos Norte Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas.

Lagman said the committee should muster enough will and courage to repel the “importuning of the executive of wrestling control from the legislature in the enactment of the General Appropriations Act [GAA].”

“It borders on condescension for administration officials and allies to insist that Congress must maintain intact the President’s pet triumvirate allocations for conditional-cash transfer [CCT], counterpart funding for public-private partnership [PPP] and the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund [MPBF], which includes the sequestered funds for unfilled positions in the Judiciary, Congress and constitutional commissions,” Lagman stressed.

The 2012 budget for the CCT ballooned to P39.4 billion from the 2011 level of P21 billion, or an increase of 86 percent.

“This huge escalation is being pursued in the absence of an impact assessment study on the effectiveness of CCT as a component of the poverty alleviation agenda and despite nationwide complaints of flawed implementation,” Lagman said.

The proposed appropriation for government counterpart for the PPP, meanwhile, is P22.1 billion, or 76.8 percent higher than its 2011 budget of P12.5 billion.  Lagman said the increase was being proposed despite its “anemic implementation with no project having been bid out after 15 months.”

The budget under the MPBF has been under fire from several lawmakers, who had expressed fears that the huge amount could effectively become the President’s own fund or “pork barrel” if unreleased to the agencies at the end of the year.

The MPBF is an innovation in the 2012 budget that places under Malacañang’s control the funds for hiring of new personnel, including the unprecedented transfer to the executive control of such monies for coequal branches, like Congress and the Judiciary, and for independent constitutional commissions, like the Office of the Ombudsman, Commission on Elections and Commission on Audit.

Under the budget, the MPBF has a total P101.4-billion appropriation broken down into the following: salary increases authorized under Senate and House Joint Resolution 4 of 2009, or the third tranche of the salary standardization law (P54.5 billion); funding requirement for the filling up of unfilled positions (P23.4 billion); and, payment of other personal benefits, including funds for newly filled positions in other agencies (P23.4 billion).

“The impoundment of the funds for unfilled positions, which were previously appropriated in the separate budgets of coequal bodies and constitutional commissions enjoying fiscal autonomy, violates the Constitution,” Lagman said .

Despite questions on the legality of some of the provisions in the proposed GAA, the House in plenary session approved before midnight on Friday the P1.816-trillion 2012 budget.

Voting viva voce, the House passed on second reading House Bill 5023, which Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. described as a budget “grounded on the realities” of the national and global economy.

Party-list Rep. Teodoro Casiño of Bayan Muna said the budget was rushed using a process that is both undemocratic, “untransparent” and which undermines Congress’s power of the purse, “exactly the way that it was during the previous administration.”

House Deputy Minority Leader Danilo Suarez even threatened to question the proposed budget before the Supreme Court.