271059/271347/E-02472/E-04036 Concurring and Dissenting Opinion: Justice Maria Filomena D. Singh — Official PDF

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion . 21 G.R. Nos. 271347, 278353, E-02472 & E-04036 The UA proceeds in the opposite direction.· Here, the additional financing has not yet materialized when the annual GAA is enacted. Congress nevertheless identifies in advance the purposes for which such future financing may be used and enacts a corresponding appropriation, expressly making its availability contingent upon the subsequent realization of the specified financing. Congress has anticipated the possibility that additional resources may become available during the fiscal year and has already enacted the legislative authority necessary to use those resources for specifically identified purposes. What has been deferred is not the legislative act of appropriation, but the availability of that appropriation for obligation and expenditure. This is why the UA may properly be understood as an advance enactment of a special or supplemli:ntal appropriation. Congress has, in effect, perfonned the legislative act that it would otherwise have been required to perf'omi later; after the additional revenues or financing had materialized. The difference is that Congress has made the authority conditional from the outset. Under the UA, there is thus already a standby legislative authorization made by Congress for government departlnents, agencies and instrumentalities to incur obligations. The Executive Department need not return to Congress for a second appropriation law merely because the anticipated fiscal condition has subsequently materialized. Congress has already enacted the authority. What remains is to establish that the condition upon which the authority was made operative has occurred, i.e., the existence of the conditions for release provided for in the Special Provisions in the UA. There are two budget ceilings involved upon submission of the NEP and BESF: one for programmed, the other for unprogrammed Since the UA is found in the NEP, which, as discussed above, is a form of advanced enactment of a supplemental or special budget, the President, in transmitting the NEP and BESF to Congress, effectively submits two distinct spending authorities: one for programmed appropriations, and the other for the unprogrammed. This does not mean that the President submits two unrelated budgets. Article VII, Section 22 of the Constitution requires the submission of a single budget of expenditures and sources of fina..11.cing, and the NEP and BESF remain components of that single submission. Rather, the point is that within that single submission are two distinct categories of spending authority, each