THE Senate, voting 14-1, on Thursday rushed the approval of the Palace-proposed P3.002-trillion 2016 budget bill, setting the stage for bicameral negotiations with the House of Representatives to quickly hammer out a reconciled version of the money measure that President Aquino expects to sign into law before the year-end.
The awaited Senate approval on third and final reading came after senators ended three session days of marathon deliberations to meet its schedule to convene the bicameral panel and reconcile conflicting provisions in Senate and House versions of the budget bill by next weekend.
Only Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III opposed the passage of the budget bill.
Senate President Franklin M. Drilon confirmed that lawmakers sitting in the bicameral panel will strive to report out a final version by December 4.
Malacañang remains hopeful there would be no last-minute hitches that could derail the agreed schedule of final approval of the 2016 budget to preserve the administration’s record of not operating on last year’s reenacted budget since it took power in 2010.
Among the biggest allocations in the proposed budget submitted to Congress were: P411.4 billion for the Department of Education; P378.3 billion for the Department of Public Works and Highways; P124.2 billion for the Department of Health; P123.6 billion for the Department of the Interior and Local Government; P115.8 billion for the Department of National Defense; P109 billion for the Department of Social Welfare and Development; P47.8 billion for the Department of Agriculture; P43.4 billion for the Department of Transportation and Communications; P33.3 billion for state universities and colleges; P28.4 billion for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao; P25.8 billion for the Judiciary; P22.8 billion for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources; P20 billion for the Department of Foreign Affairs; P18.7 billion for the Department of Finance; P18.1 billion for the Department of Labor and Employment; P17.9 billion for the Department of Science and Technology; and P12.8 billion for the Department of Justice.
Senate and House leaders earlier assured the timely passage of the budget bill, saying this would also enable Congress to take up other pending administration priority bills, including the controversial Bangsamoro basic law (BBL) and the Palace-proposed Salary Standardization Law (SSL) that lawmakers are looking to approve before adjouring for the campaign season. “After the budget [bill] is the Bangsamoro basic law,” Drilon said. “We have only one senator who will interpellate, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile. We are not aware of any other senator. Assuming that this is the case, we should be able to terminate the period of debates by the first week of December.”
Assuming, he said, that no other senator will interpellate, “then afterward, we will go to the period of amendment. We still have time. We have December 1 to 18.”
“Also, another proposed measure which we will give priority is the Customs and Tariff Modernization Act.”
This, even as the approved 2016 disbursements for big-ticket projects are likely to be suspended in March when the national and local election campaign period kicks in.
Drilon disclosed that the legislative agenda for next week will be devoted to the bicameral conference committee meetings on the budget bill “to thresh out the differences, so we expect the bicam will finish its work by December 4.”
“We will ratify the Bicam Report the week of December 7 to 11, including the printing of the budget itself. So we expect to submit the budget by December 14. That’s our target date so that the President will have a week to 10 days to review the budget and see whether he will exercise his line-item veto as he would, traditionally.”
The Senate president, however, voiced confidence “that we will have the budget finished by the month of December.” Drilon explained “it is so important [to finish the money measure] because in the budget, there is P57 billion for the Salary Standardization Law IV.”
“Ang kabuuan po ng alokasyon para sa SSL ay P225.8 billion, which will be given in four years beginning 2016 with an allocation of about P57 billion,” he said, adding: “It is important that the budget becomes effective by January 1, 2016, so that we can expect this SSL IV.” He told reporters that soon after passing the 2016 budget bill, “we will give the highest priority to the implementing law on the SSL IV which will now define in definite terms what the salary scale will be for each salary grade of government employees.”
Drilon disclosed that another amendment he asked the Senate Committee on Finance to adopt is the restoration of P500 million in the budget of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) “in order that we can speed up the transmission of the election results.” He explained that the Comelec has requested that its budget “be augmented by P500 million for what they call as the electronic results transmission solution management and services in order to speed up the transmission of the results [as] this was not in the national expenditure program submitted to Congress.”
“The House of Representatives included this and found the request of the Comelec to be in order and, therefore, augmented the budget of the Comelec by P500 million.”