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

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion 5 G.R. Nos. 271347, 278353, E-02472 & E-04036 system exists up to today, which means that the President is, much like the Governor General of the past, vested with power not just to influence, but also to control, certain aspects of the appropriations process. This has prompted some commentators to. say that there is "hyper-presidentialism" in the Philippine budget process, or the tendency of the Philippine political system to concentrate power in the hands of the President vis-a-vis the other branches of govemment. 11 . . One fonn of control that .stands 9ut is t).w _specjfic prohibition against Congress to increase the total amount of appropriations proposed by the President. Otherwise known as the budget ceiling, Article VI, Section 25(1) of the Constitution states that "[t]he Congress may not increase the appropriations recommended by the President for the operation of the Government as specified in the budget." This provision can be traced to Article VI, Section 19(1) of the 1935 Constitution.12 In the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, it is revealed that the provision was prepared by the Sub-Committee of Seven. During the plenary debates on the said provision, Delegate Serafin Marabut (Delegate Marabut) sought to remove the provision and introduce, in its stead, a modified system patterned after the federal budget process of the United States. 13 According to Delegate Marabut, the budget ceiling will curtail the • power of the Legislature to respond to funding requirements for programs that the Executive has refused or, at least missed, to include in the Budget. He also claimed that the budget ceiling will not prevent excessive expenditures in govenunent, as the Legislature may still appropriate funds for certain programs outside of the Budget. What Delegate Marabut suggested is the adoption ofa centralized system where a committee of the Legislature will be tasked to oversee all appropriation-related bills, instead of the system where different committees take up such bills, The arguments of Delegate Marabut were countered, however, by Delegate (eventually President) Elpidio Quirino (Delegate Quirino). He contended that the removal of the budget ceiling will result in the 11 Ryan Hartzelle C. Balisacan, Hyper-presidenlialisrn in Philippine budgeting: toward a political theory of the budget using insight.,·from a post-mortern examination of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (l)AP), LIX PHlL. J. PUBLIC ADMIN. l (20!5j. 12 1935 CONST., art. VT, sec. 19(1) states: , . The President shall submit ·within [LS] <lays of the openh1g of each regular lesson of the Congress a b\Jdget of receipts and expenditures, which shall be the basis of the general appropriation bill. The Congress may not increase the appropriations recommended by the President for the operation of the Government as specified in the Budget, except the appropriations for the Congress and the Judicial Department. The fonn of the Budget and the information that it should contain shall be prescribed by Jaw. 13 VII JOURNAL, CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION (December 7, 1934).