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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-9/cayetano-pork-sm.webp" alt="Alan Cayetano" loading="lazy" />
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(Alan Cayetano)
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House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano also has an October pact with Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco that was even brokered by President Rodrigo Duterte, but uncertainty grows over it by the day.


The incumbent only needed to satisfy the cravings for lump sums in the chamber to remain on the saddle despite the past agreement.


Confrontations over allocations from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the agency which is the usual source of kickbacks, have been happening at the House in shameless regularity.


Negros Oriental 3rd District Rep. Arnolfo Teves Jr. and Deputy Speaker Rep. LRay Villafuerte, for instance, got into each other's nerves regarding the DPWH allocations. Apparently the Nacionalista Party House members who now dominate the chamber are getting the lion's share of next year's infrastructure allocations.

Teves raised a question to DPWH Secretary Mark Villar during a budget hearing last week about Camarines Sur and Taguig getting P20 billion worth of projects in both districts, while those communities in regions that are in most need received far less.


Taguig, of course, is Cayetano's bulwark, which has his wife, Lani Cayetano, as a House representative, while Villafuerte is Camarines Sur's 2nd District representative.


Teves said if the allocations were based on absorptive capacity or the ability of a particular community to effectively use the funds allocated to it on a particular year, his district should have received a better allocation than the P2 billion that it received.


Teves' point is valid since under the "use it or lose it" principle that guides the national budgeting system, the productive application of the yearly allotment is rewarded with an equal amount if not bigger in the GAA the following year.


This is not the first time that House members were embroiled in controversies during budget deliberations, since similar bitter exchanges happened in 2018 that delayed the approval of the 2019 budget by almost four months.


During the lull caused by the bickering over pork, the government was run using a reenacted budget resulting to a slowdown in the momentum of the economy.


The House of Representatives and the Senate blamed each other for the delay as legislators traded allegations of pork insertions.


The public perception, however, was that members of Congress periodically tear at each other to get a slice of kickbacks and commissions from project allocations in the budget.


After days of acrimonious debates, the Bicameral Conference Committee made up of senators and members of the House of Representatives passed the final version of the General Appropriations Bill.


To the disappointment of the opportunists, the President, however, thoroughly reviewed the final version of the budget and weeded out the carefully inserted pork.


Through his veto power, Mr. Duterte removed P95.3 billion worth of items in the 2019 national budget, which were considered in conflict with the Supreme Court 2013 ruling that outlawed the Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel.


Among the vetoed items were P75 billion in insertions made by the House to the final version of the budget bill that were not part of the program by the DPWH, which are against provisions of the Constitution, since these are considered "unprogrammed" funds.

The shameless bickering over pork, kickbacks and commissions