THE Supreme Court (SC) declared, after discussing at length the arguments, that “the withdrawal of unobligated allotments from the implementing agencies, and the declarations of the withdrawn unobligated allotments and unreleased appropriations as saving prior to the end or the fiscal year…” was in violation of the Constitution.
Moreover, this “DAP” practice of the DBM approved by the President, did not comply with the statutory definition of savings contained in the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
The DAP, as a mechanism to ramp-up government spending, was not in itself declared unconstitutional, but it was certain identified acts and practices under the DAP, the DBM’s implementing Circular 541 and related Executive issuances which were declared unconstitutional, namely, the DBM’s own definition and declaration of savings prior to the end of the fiscal year (premature!); cross-border transfers of the savings of the Executive to augment the appropriations of other offices outside the Executive, e.g., the Commission on Elections and the Commission on Audit and the funding of projects, activities and programs that were not covered by any appropriation in the General Appropriations Act.
The SC declared void the use under the DAP of unprogrammed funds because of the absence of a certification by the National Treasurer that revenue collections exceeded the revenue targets—a condition provided in the relevant GAA.
The Executive’s intentions were good, but he overreached and, through the DAP mechanism usurped certain strictly Legislative functions in violation of Section 25 (5) Article VI of the Constitution, which allows and prescribes budget realignments. This Article says that “…the President…may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriation law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.” There must be actual savings (the Supreme Court said there were none, legally), and must be an augmentation from and within the Executive department’s appropriations (there were cross-border fund transfers).
There is, of course, the issue of how and why there seems to be a selective channeling of DAP funds to some favored politicians, e.g., chosen senators and congressmen and party-mates, making DAP an instrument of political patronage.
And we still have to see how properly the DAP funds were actually spent.
In any case, the present 2015 budget-enactment process is defining savings and other budget provisions more carefully to avoid the unconstitutional practices pointed out by the Supreme Court. All for the good.