THURSDAY / SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
WWW.INQUIRER.NET
By Leila B, Salayerria
@!ci!4!INa : House approval in history
The House of Redresentatives
is set to approve the p4.1-tril-
lion 2o2o budget on September
20 with minimal changes, just a
month after it was submitted
byMalacanang.
Save for institutional amend-
ments for educatior! health and
military clrmps, there would be
no other changes in the pro-
posed budget, said Albay .Rep.
Joey Salceda, chat of the House
ways and means committee.
"The rest, they are the
same, except for these three.
Same comma, same semicolon,
same capital," he said in a press
briefing in Malacanang.
No pork inserted
Salceda also said there were
no new insertions in this budget
and no "pork" as defin€d by the
Supreme Court and struck dowt
as unconstitutional, but flouse
members' districts would get
Ploo million in proiects.
According to him, the pro-
jects proposed by lawmakers
were not pork since these were
included in the budger by the
executive departments, and all
This would be the earliest
he said. It was no longer a
'grind," but a "Bicol express,"
he added.
"We hope the so-Called
Duterte supercoalition in the
Senate would do the sarhe,"
he said.
He noted that last year, the
Senate had questioned the in-
sertions of the House members.
The House would not even
form a "small group" to handle
the individual amendments of
' House members, because there
ECONOMIC BRIEFtNG Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, chair of the are none.
House committee on ways and means, discusses the
legislative status of tax reforms at a weekly economic press ' Challenge to Senate
briefing on Wednesday.
-Joli.r rolooc "I'm posing it as a challenge
to the Senate. We don't have in- '
dividual amendments. They
these were itemized. tem of the past, he said ,,it also should not have institutionat
The departments also have smells, acti, quacks lilte the
amehdments," he added.
their own rules about proiects need of my conitituents. and it Last year, the House and
to include in their budgets, and also smelis, acts, quacks as if
there was tension between it's allowed bv thi
had tussled over
Senate
Suoreme
amendments inftoduced by the
them over which programs to Court," House after the ratification of
fund, he added. the biiameral report, leading to
"Of course there are alloca- ,Working supercoalition, the delay in the approval ofthe
tions for my constituents. Who Accordingto Salced4 the im_ 2o19 budget.
determined it? The executive," pending House approval of tlle r As a result, the country op-
hesaid. budget bill this month showed erated on a reenacted- budgdt
Asked about this looking that the Duterte supercoalition for the first few morths of the
similar to the pork banel sys- in the House is working. year. rNQ
o FAe<r-As'