Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman (Screenshot from YouTube live)

Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman continues to lecture former Supreme Court (SC) Justice Adolf Azcuna about what Congress can and cannot do to the proposed national budget.

Lagman, the self-styled independent minority congressman, said in a statement on Monday afternoon, Oct. 2: "The insistence of [Azcuna] that the Congress cannot increase the appropriations made by the President in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) converts the Congress into a rubberstamp of the President in the enactment of the General Appropriations Act (GAA)."

The NEP is the precursor of the General Appropriations Bill (GAB), or the proposed national budget. Once enacted, the GAB turns into the GAA.

The House of Representatives--which Lagman is a member of--and the Senate comprise Congress. But it's the House that gets first dibs on the budget bill.

"Under the Constitution, the President proposes in the NEP, which he submits to the Congress, the annual budget for the operation of the government. It is only a proposal which is subject to modification and realignment by the Congress, provided the total amount (ceiling) of the NEP is not exceeded," he said.

Lagman basically said that, "The President proposes while the Congress disposes."

"Otherwise, if the Congress cannot amend, modify, delete, realign, reduce, increase, and reallocate items of expenditure in the NEP as long as the ceiling is not breached, why in the first place did the Constitution vest in the Congress the power of the purse?" he asked in a rhetorical question.

"Definitely, the NEP is not cast in stone," Lagman, president of the Liberal Party (LP), said in a reiteration of his previous message to Azcuna.

The NEP for 2024 is worth P5.768 trillion--the largest in the country’s history. The legislative equivalent of the next year's NEP--House Bill (HB) No.8980 or the 2024 GAB--is also worth P5.768 trillion.

The House kept this amount or ceiling intact when it passed the budget measure on third and final reading last Sept. 27, with individual amendments from the congressmen to follow. The amendments were collated by a four-member "small committee".

The most significant of these expected changes in the GAB are the reallocation of confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs) from one agency to another.

Last Sept. 27, the House leadership made a "collective decision" to strip civilian agencies and departments of their CIFs under next year's spending plan. These special lump sum funds will be reallocated for the purpose of addressing the "escalating threats in the West Philippine Sea".

CIFs under the 2024 NEP total P9.2 billion.

"The contention of [Azcuna] that the projected reallocation of [CIF] violates the Constitution is not correct," Lagman said in a statement last Sept. 28.