Senator Panfilo M, Lacson has likened some of the country’s “public servants” to the slaves during the Civil War in the United States who competed for a piece of salted pork as reward from their masters.
He stated this in his Twitter account after he and some fellow senators had suspected that P532.3 billion in “questionable appropriations” in the proposed national budget for 2021 could be considered as “pork barrel.”
“Pork barrel” originated in a pre-Civil War practice in the US when slaves were given a barrel of salted pork as a reward from their masters, requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout,” Lacson said in his Twitter account.
“Here, the slaves are called ‘public servants’,” he added.
In our continuing efforts to scrutinize the 2021 National Expenditure Program (NEP) , particularly on the issue of “re-appropriations” and “lump sum appropriations” involving infrastructure projects under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), we have found that the initial amount of P73.5 billion covering 2,933 items has now ballooned to P135.8 billion involving 5,913 projects. Thus, this effectively increased the total questionable appropriations to P532.3 billion from the initial P469 billion that we exposed earlier, including lump sums in the amount of P396.4 billion, Lacson said in an earlier statement.
“Considering the projects under “Operations” in the proposed budget of the DPWH has total appropriations of P613.1 billion, easily 87 percent or P532.3 billion is deemed questionable,” he added.
The NEP is the mother of the proposed General Appropriations (GAA or national budget) which is sent to Congress yearly.