Congress optimistic President Duterte will sign 2022 GAA by year end

Congress aims to pass the proposed 2022 P5.024 trillion national budget bill before it goes into a Christmas break and signed into law by President Duterte before the end of the year.

Based on the timetable of the Senate finance committee chaired by Senator Juan Edgardo ‘’Sonny’’ M. Angara, the Senate and the House of Representatives will send the proposed 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA) bill to Malacanang on December 21.

The Lower House has already passed its own version of the GAA bill.

To achieve this, the Senate will work double time to recover the lost two days of budget deliberation after the Senate leadership decided to close the doors of the Senate complex last Thursday and today as senators are now on strict quarantine protocols.

This came after Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who went to the Senate last Tuesday to help defend the proposed. 2022 Department of National Defense (DND) budget, relayed to the Senate last Wednesday night the information that he is COVID-19 positive.

Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said the Senate starting disinfecting the Senate premises and required all senators and staff to quarantine themselves and be RT-PCR tested after five days of exposure.

When the Senate offices reopen on Monday, senators will scrutinize the budgets of the Department of Transportation (DoTr), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Education (DepEd), Commission on Higher Education (CHeD), and Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO).

In the following days, senators will either reduce or increase the budgets of government departments and agencies during the period of amendments.

In the first week of December, the Senate and Lower House bicameral conference committees will meet and iron out the differing versions of their GAA bill.

The Senate leadership had hoped to have the national budget bill enacted into law before the close of 2022 so that there would not be a re-enacted budget.

If the government will be forced to operate under a re-enacted budget, the projects planned by the national government and local government units (LGIs) will be frozen.