{"id":55904,"date":"2015-07-16T11:09:44","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T03:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=55904"},"modified":"2015-07-16T11:09:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T03:09:44","slug":"osmena-reveals-p2b-pork-barrel-for-selected-senators-in-2015-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/07\/16\/osmena-reveals-p2b-pork-barrel-for-selected-senators-in-2015-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Osme\u00f1a reveals P2B pork barrel for selected senators in 2015 budget"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Senator<\/a>
Senator Sergio Osme\u00f1a III (Facebook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013 According to Senator Sergio Osme\u00f1a III, several senators were still allotted pork barrel funds of at least P200 million to P2 billion from the 2015 General Appropriations Act (GAA). These were intended to be used for projects on different agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they have the right to identify up to P200 million. There are those with P1 billion. Others have P2 billion \u2026 Just don\u2019t ask me to identify anymore,\u201d Osme\u00f1a said in a Philippine Daily Inquirer report, adding that he did not accept any fund from this year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Osme\u00f1a also disclosed that even the 2016 GAA proposed a P3 trillion budget for lump-sum funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s no pork, [the President\u2019s] pet bills won\u2019t be passed in Congress\u2026 That is how the President controls Congress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Senate President Franklin Drilon, however, asserted that he did not request for any pork barrel fund in the 2015 or 2016 GAA for any pet project.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I can tell you. I don\u2019t have a single lump-sum insertion and I have not inserted anything in the budget that I have nominated. None. Not a single peso,\u201d Drilon said.<\/p>\n

Discretionary funds <\/strong><\/p>\n

It can be recalled that it was Senator Panfilo Lacson who first disclosed that the 2015 national budget still had pork barrel funds worth P424 billion or higher for 11 selected government agencies. He feared that, although supposedly intended for projects, these funds were prone to misappropriation.<\/p>\n

Lacson would then question the Supreme Court (SC) for the legality of discretionary funds from the national budget. The SC earlier declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

The PDAF and the DAP, both pork barrel funds, were initially intended to \u2018fast-track public spending and push economic growth\u2019 through programs and projects.<\/p>\n

However, these funds were also allegedly sources of commissions of tens of millions of pesos for several lawmakers from their pet projects.<\/p>\n

Before the SC ruled that the PDAF and DAP were unconstitutional, each senator was allotted P200 million and a congressman was given P70 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey (Congress and Department of Budget and Management (DBM)) violated the Supreme Court ruling by not itemizing it in the budget. It should be itemized,\u201d Osme\u00f1a said, referring to the PDAF and DAP funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013 According to Senator Sergio Osme\u00f1a III, several senators were still allotted pork barrel funds of at least P200 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":55905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,1145,16,95,483],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-55904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","category-politics","tag-rewrite","mauthors-cyra-moraleda","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}