Pork barrel isn't dead

Pork lives.

      

Or, perhaps more appropriately, where there's pork, there's fat that grubby hands can't seem to get enough of.

      

Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon says that this year’s P2.606-trillion national budget has at least P4.8 billion in congressional “insertions” that is a brazen attempt to go around the Supreme Court's ruling against the pork barrel system.

      

Another lawmaker, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares, says that the the 2016 budget also has around P145 billion in pork barrel funds. Of this amount,  P97.4 billion is part of Special Purpose Funds and P50 billion spread out among various departments.

      

Former senator Panfilo Lacson was the first to point out that the 2016 budget has P424 billion in pork barrel funds. Former national treasurer Leonor Briones then claimed that Malacañang has increased the lump-sum Special Purpose Funds from P368.72 billion for this year to P430.43 billion next year. She believes that the national spending plans for 2015 and 2016 were designed as election budgets.

      

Last year, the Supreme Court declared the Priority Development Allocation Fund (PDAF), also known as pork barrel, as unconstitutional and therefore illegal.

But it appears that our lawmakers are afraid to face their constituents without offering projects that would benefit their communities and, well, their own pockets.

      

In short, members of Congress can still go on with their merry ways—at taxpayers' expense, of course.

      

Malacañang has denied that the lump sum appropriations in the annual budget are pork barrel. But with clear evidence, after going through both the 2015 and 2016 budgets with a fine-toothed comb, that pork barrel indeed continues under various guises, what's the use of the Supreme Court ruling? 

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