The House Appropriations Committee and its commission of select lawmakers complied with an internal parliamentary rule that mandates a detailed public report of the 2027 spending bill.
This report contain changes to the original budget proposal.
Sorsogon Rep. Manuel ‘Wowo’ Fortes Jr. made the statement on Wednesday.
Fortes said the budget panel also provided copies of the bill as tweaked by the Budget Amendments Review Sub-committee (BARSc) before the floor took up the measure.
He made the remarks after ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio demanded details as the House moved to discuss on second reading the P7.2-trillion spending bill.
‘The amendments, as approved by the BARSc, were incorporated to the substitute text of House Bill No. 10858 under Committee Report No. 638, as submitted to the plenary,’ Fortes told lawmakers.
Floor discussions on the budget bill hit an early snag after Tinio raised a parliamentary point of order.
He observed that the BARS violated the House rule book’s Rule 9, Sec 28-D.
This rule mandates the sub-committee to ‘produce a detailed report that includes any and all realignments and modifications… including the proponent-legislators.’
The BARSc convened last Thursday to finalize roughly P116 billion in proposed realignments from the executive’s draft budget.
The proposal channeled the bulk of the funding toward state social welfare programs and infrastructure projects.
Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Suansing, who presided over the meeting, said the panel will forgo crafting a separate budget report.
She announced that the committee was opting, instead, to incorporate the proposed amendments directly into the bill slated for plenary discussion.
The BARSc presented the realignments on a projected spreadsheet during a public livestream of its proceedings.
‘It is very clear in the rules that the BARSc must have a separate report,’ Tinio then said.
‘It cannot be said that the revised version of the House General Appropriations Bill is that report,’ the minority solon pointed out.
Kamanggagawa party-list Rep. Elijah San Fernando, who is also part of the House minority bloc, said lawmakers were not given ample time to review the substitute spending bill.
He said copies of the roughly 4,000-page measure had only been delivered to their offices at 2 a.m. on an unspecified date.
Adding to transparency concerns, Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco also raised that the BARSc failed to disclose which agency budgets or programs were reduced, so that P116 billion could be realigned.