MANILA, Philippines—The allocation based on so-called “bottom-up budgeting,” unless exorbitant, may not be considered “pork,” Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III said on Tuesday.

Sotto said this following Senator Panfilo Lacson’s latest revelation of an alleged plan to give congressmen P700 million allocation each and P1.5 billion each to 22 deputy speakers of the House of Representatives.

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If the plan pushes through, Lacson said the total amount of “pork” for House members alone would reach P54 billion.

But for Sotto, “Kung ito ay manggagaling sa tinatawag na bottom-up budgeting, nasa NEP (National Expenditure Program), sinubmit sa House, huwag lang masyadong exorbitant yung mga nakalagay per district, hindi pwedeng tawaging pork kung nakalagay na doon at bottom-up budgeting…”

(If it comes from what we call “bottom-up” budgeting, it’s in the NEP, submitted to the House, and if the budget per legislative district is not too exorbitant, it cannot be considered as pork)

“Pero, kung ito ay binalasa mo, at meron kang ginalaw at meron kang nilumpsum kung saan-saang lugar, ay pwedeng tawaging pork yun, hindi maiwasan yun,” he said in an interview over DZMM.

(But if you shuffle it, you move something, and you have lump sums allotted for various areas, then you may call it pork, we can’t avoid that)

“Kung masyadong malalaki naman, di ba ang mentality ng mga kasama namin, lalo na si Senator Lacson, is huwag naman masyadong matingkad. Huwag naman masyadong nakabukol, di ba? Kasi kung hindi man pork yan, mukha ng pork tuloy,” the Senate leader added.

(If the allocations are huge, the mentality of some of our colleagues, specially Senator Lacson, is that don’t make it too obvious. Because it looks like “pork”even if it’s not)

Despite this new “pork” issue raised by his colleague, Sotto remains confident Senate may pass the proposed P4.1-trillion national budget for 2020 by end of November.

Sotto said the Senate could start plenary deliberations next month once the House of Representatives transmits its approved budget bill either this week or next week.

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Congress will go on break on October 4 and will resume on November 4.

“Siguro pagbalik namin ng November, second week ng November pwede ng interpellation period na …” he said.

(Maybe when we resume in November, second week of November, we can start the interpellation period)

“And then that means, give it two to three weeks, palagay mo nang pinakamatagal na yung (let’s say the latest would be) three weeks. Last week of November pwede naming i second and third reading sapagkat ano naman cetified as urgent e, (maybe we can tackle it on second and third reading since this is certified as urgent anyway),” Sotto added. /muf

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