Andaya says Senate ‘desperately looking for ghosts’ in 2019 budget

The upper house is "desperately looking for ghosts" in the 2019 budget, House of Representatives Appropriations Chair Rolando Andaya Jr. said Sunday.

"Senators are desperately looking for ghosts in the 2019 General Appropriations Act," Andaya said in a statement released late Sunday.

"The problem, they seem to find ghosts everywhere except at their own house," he added.

His statement came a day after Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Saturday said the lower house may have unconstitutionally realigned some P79 billion in the proposed 2019 national budget.

Citing a report from the Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office (LBRMO), Sotto said there may have been realignments made which were not discussed in the bicameral level.

In his statement on Sunday, Andaya turned the tables on the Senate as he claimed there needs to be an investigation on what he said was the realignment by the Senate of P75 billion.

"If post-bicam itemization of lump-sum budget by the House of Representatives is unconstitutional or irregular, what about post-bicam realignment by the Senate of P75 billion in the national budget?" he said.

"It is now the turn of the senators to explain to the public the P75-billion realignment made by the Senate after both chambers ratified the 2019 GAA. The realignment is also nowhere to be found in the bicameral conference committee report," elaborated Andaya.

In the same statement, Andaya claimed the House did its job, as each itemization of the budget was "within parameters."

"The House, for its part, did its job. We itemized our amendments. The itemization was within the parameters of the Bicameral Conference Committee Report ratified by each chamber," he said.

Andaya earlier claimed that the P75-billion "insertion" of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to the 2019 national budget was divided among senators and congressmen as "discretionary funds."

"Worse, unlike in the House of Representatives, there are no proponents for the Senate realignment. Meaning, the funds are parked somewhere in the national budget. This is clearly parked pork," he claimed.

"The senators may try to justify the realignment by describing them again as institutional amendments. But how can they describe the Senate's P25-billion realignment that was parked in the DPWH budget? Still institutional amendments?" Andaya added.

Andaya has repeatedly made noise over the proposed 2019 budget, as just last month he claimed that the DBM generated savings worth P370 billion in 2017, but did not present a report on it, and "this is where the DBM pork lies."

The lawmaker also previously claimed that then-Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno's relatives received millions of pesos worth of anomalous government contracts.

Diokno, now Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor, has denied Andaya's allegations, saying he was being singled out by Andaya due to moves to abolish the Road Board. — BM, GMA News