Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III and a member of the House of Representatives is set to file a petition with the Supreme Court questioning the constitutionality of the 2024 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
“I’m already talking to a member of the House and he also agrees with my position. As a matter of fact, malapit ko na matapos ‘yung outline namin of the reasons why the additional P450 billion made by Congress to the level of the unprogrammed appropriations as proposed by the president is unconstitutional,” Pimentel said in a virtual interview with Senate reporters.
(I’m already talking to a member of the house and he also agrees with my position. As a matter of fact, I’m about to complete our outline on the reasons why the additional P450 billion made by Congress to the level of the unprogrammed appropriations as proposed by the president is unconstitutional.)
Pimentel did not disclose who is the House lawmaker that will join him in filing the petition, but he mentioned that it is not Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman.
According to Pimentel, the filing of the petition before the SC was supposed to be this week, but he explained that this will still depend on the “lawyers’ readiness.”
Last December 2023, Pimentel tagged the then-2024 General Appropriations Bill as “unconstitutional” after the bicameral conference committee increased the unprogrammed appropriations by P450 billion.
Pimentel argued that the P450-billion hike made the total amount of the 2024 budget exceed the P5.768 trillion national budget originally proposed by the Executive Department, which he emphasized was a violation of Article VI, Section 25(1) of the 1987 Constitution.
Article VI, Section 25(1) of the 1987 Constitution states that “Congress may not increase the appropriations recommended by the President for the operation of the Government as specified in the budget. The form, content, and manner of preparation of the budget shall be prescribed by law.”
Lagman made a similar position on Tuesday and claimed that these unprogrammed appropriations were annually increased to accommodate partisan and pet projects.
Senate finance committee chairman Senator Sonny Angara, who co-chaired the bicameral conference committee, maintained that the final version of the 2024 national budget bill, which was eventually signed by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., was in accordance with the 1987 Constitution.
Angara earlier argued that this constitutional provision only referred to the programmed appropriations or the funds that are specified to fund certain projects.
Meanwhile, Albay Rep. Joey Salceda said the question on whether or not unprogrammed funds were covered by the constitutional prohibition on increasing appropriations recommended by the President had been discussed in Congress.
“This question was discussed in Congress, and we took the effort, during budget deliberations, to seek guidance from both the Executive through the DBM and the records of the Constitutional Commission,” Salceda said.
Salceda said the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) wrote his office to clarify that unprogrammed appropriations were not part of the fiscal program.
“As such, only the programmed appropriations are subject to the Article VI, Section 25 (1) of the Constitution, or the prohibition against increasing appropriations recommended by the President,” Salceda said.
“In short, the DBM said Congress can increase the unprogrammed appropriations as proposed,” he added. —KBK, GMA Integrated News
