By Fel V. Maragay

DEEP cuts in the 2009 national budget—including reductions in lump-sum appropriations for neglected and war-torn communities— have put the Senate on a collision course with the House of Representatives and Malacañang.

Senators slashed a P3.2-billion subsidy to local governments, leaving only P342.5 million. They also scrapped the P1- billion Kilos Asenso Fund, conceived by the President to augment financing for farm-to-market roads and markets for poor local communities.

The Senate also cut P2.4 billion from the P44.4-billion Agriculture and Fisheries and Fisheries Modernization Fund, which is being administered by the Agriculture Department.

Senator Edgardo Angara, chairman of the finance committee, said the Senate panel in the bicameral conference committee was having a hard time convincing its House counterpart to accept the budget cuts and realignments made by senators.

The failure of both panels to reach a compromise on the lump sum appropriations and other differences has delayed the budget approval.

But Angara said the Senate did not feel comfortable with the administration’s practice of allocating huge lump-sum funds without detailing the projects for which these were intended.

Calling for transparency in the government’s financial transactions, Senator Pia Cayetano backed the Senate’s move to subject lump-sum appropriations under the Executive to a system of checks and balances by Congress.

“There are several items under the headings of General Fund Adjustments, Unprogrammed Funds and the budgets of some departments which don’t have special provisions for their use and administration,” Cayetano said.

“Details on how the amount will be allocated and who will be the beneficiaries are unclear. There are no guidelines to ensure that the funds are properly disbursed and used for the purposes for which they were intended.”

Senators even slashed P10 billion from the P287.7-billion allocation for debt service, an automatic appropriation that should have been left untouched by Congress.

At the same time, Angara denied claims by House leaders that the senators awarded themselves additional pork barrel running into billions of pesos. What the Senate did, he said, was to create a Pl0-billion “economic stimulus fund” to augment the government’s resources for pump-priming the economy and mitigating the impact of the global financial crash.

He said the senators were hoping to convince the congressmen to raise the economic stimulus fund to at least P30 billion.

Documents obtained by Standard Today from the Senate Legislative Budget, Research and Monitoring Office also revealed that the Senate reduced the budgets of 80 government agencies but beefed up the allocations for 140 others. The appropriations for 145 other agencies were left intact.

The Senate cut P3.4 billion from the P120.5-billion budget of the Public Works Department. Despite the huge cut, the department was left with P117 billion, the second biggest among the line departments.

The Education Department received the biggest fund augmentation, amounting to P6 billion, under the Senate version of the national budget. That increased the department’s total budget to Pl62.3 billion.

The Senate slashed P3.2 billion from the P9-billion budget of the Agrarian Reform Department.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile later explained it as the offshoot of Congress’ decision to suspend compulsory land acquisition as embodied in Joint Resolution l9, which extended the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program by six months after Dec. 31, 2008.