MALACAÑANG on Tuesday, August 14, raised worry about the executive department's usual "smooth working relationship" with the House of Representatives.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. said the Palace is now unsure of its ties with its allies in the House of Representatives who should have supported President Rodrigo Duterte's proposed P3.757-trillion cash-based appropriation next year.
This comes after the House appropriations panel earlier announced the suspension of deliberations on the proposed budget for 2019 because of its objection to the cash-based budgeting system.
"Let's just say, with the [proposed] budget being rejected by Congress, we don't know what ties we have with the House now," Roque told Palace reporters in an interview.
"This is President Rodrigo Roa Duterte's budget. And if the House leadership has finally decided to reject it, they rejected President Duterte's budget. I think it's up to them to explain to the President why," he added.
Davao City Representative Karlo Nograles, chair of the House appropriations panel, on August 11 said that "consistent with the position of the House to oppose cash-based budgeting," there will be no hearings on the proposed 2019 budget until further notice.
Nograles also emphasized that the House committee would first await the "necessary changes" that would be made before it proceeds with the budget deliberations.
The Duterte government is proposing a cash-based national budget of P3.757 trillion next year, slightly lower than the current obligations-based appropriation of P3.767 trillion.
Unlike an obligations-based budget that allows spending for two years, cash-based budgeting requires all government agencies to use their approved budgets within the fiscal year.
Roque said the executive branch does not understand the House lawmakers' "sudden change of heart," noting that they were previously supportive of the proposed cash-based budget system.
He also alluded that the change of House leadership last July 23, which installed Pampanga 2nd District Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the new House Speaker, seemed to have brought in "a different kind of relationship" between the Palace and the House of Representatives.
He, however, was quick to clarify that Duterte's office was "not blaming anyone" over the House panel's rejection of the proposed 2019 national budget.
"You know it just so happened that there was a change in the leadership, and for the first time, the budget [was] rejected in its entirerty. What are we supposed to think?
I am not implying anything other than it's for the House to clarify. We don't know because we submitted the budget, as provided by the Constitution," Roque said.
"And I suppose everyone in the leadership, we suppose as an equally close allies as the former leadership of the House. So it is really is for the House to explain why there is all of the sudden an outright rejection of the President's budget," he added.
Roque said Duterte was also giving the House leaders the "benefit of the doubt," as the Chief Executive does not actually want to accept that his proposed budget was rejected for the first time by whom he considered as his "closest" allies.
"As far as we are concerned, we hope that we can restore the usual, smooth working relationship that we've had with Congress since the beginning of the 17th Congress, because we consider the House as an important ally in our discharge of official functions," the Palace official said. (SunStar Philippines)