Pangan: Again, the bickerings

ONCE again, the national budget for the year 2021 is at the risk of being delayed due to some posturings of the members of the lower house of Congress.

Each one of them is pushing for allocation of funds for their respective districts in the guise of infrastructure projects aimed for the benefit of their constituencies on paper, that is, but in truth, these honorable representatives of the people pocket big chunks of the money better used for the benefit of the people. Well, what are they in power for?

Since under the Constitution Congress holds the purse, an exclusive authority vested on it by the fundamental law of the land, such that the Executive and the Judiciary are both subservient to the holder of the purse for their MOOE, or monthly operating expenses of the co-equal branches of the government.

Presently, they are mired in talks on who will hold the Speakership of the House for the next term. Current Speaker Representative Alan Peter Cayetano is to hand over the reins to Representative Lord Allan Velasco in observance of the agreement brokered by President Duterte some time ago. Now, the president has distanced himself from such agreement and let the congressmen decide on who will lead them ahead.

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The beleaguered Department of Education or DepEd, according to Representative Dante Marcoleta, had its hands full when interpolated by Marcoleta during the hearing at the House recently. Its budget is at the risk of being blocked because it cannot produce good results on the learning materials when it has the biggest allocation in the national budget.

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We will test the efficacy of distance learning and other methods contrived by the smart alecks at DepEd by October 5 onwards when these systems sink in the consciousness of learners. The budget for these is mindblowing and the bright boys of DepEd will strive hard to justify these allocations otherwise Representative Marcoleta will emerge triumphant in his claim that the humongous budget of the department is indeed misused, or to use a better term, abused by the officials of the Department of Education.

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So, the hardworking Senator Bong Go is urging President Duterte to expand the investigation on other agencies of the government after Philhealth to ascertain if they are corruption-free. The lessons learned from the investigation of the anomalous Philhealth convinced Senator Go to initiate investigations of all government agencies to find out the roots of irregularities. Fine idea, Senator Go!

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