While the Supreme Court was crystal clear and unanimous when it killed the congressional pork, it wasn’t as categorical about the President’s pork. Like milk, it was half-and-half on the need for a line-item budget which, in effect, would have done away with lump-sum appropriations of the President.

If you read its 72-page decision carefully, you will notice that the Court had a spirited discussion on the President’s power to veto line items in the budget. Written by Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe, the ponencia devoted 6 pages to this issue, under the heading “Checks and Balances.”

These parts are instructive:

 “The prime example of a constitutional check and balance would be the  President’s power to veto an item written into an appropriation…submitted to him by Congress…The justification for the President’s item-veto power rests on a variety of policy goals such as to prevent log-rolling legislation, impose fiscal restrictions on the legislature, as well as to fortify the executive branch’s role in the budgetary process…”

“For the President to exercise his item-veto power, it necessarily follows that there exists a proper ‘item’ which may be the object of the veto…On this premise, it may be concluded that an appropriation bill, to ensure that the President may be able to exercise his power of item veto, must contain ‘specific appropriations of money’…”

The Court added:

“…it is significant to point out that an item of appropriation must be an item characterized by singular correspondence—meaning an allocation of a specified singular amount for a specified singular purpose, otherwise known as a ‘line- item.’’

After laboriously defining a “line item,” the decision continued by contrasting it with lump-sump appropriations. 

“…what beckons constitutional infirmity are appropriations which merely provide for a singular lump-sum amount to be tapped as a source of funding for multiple purposes…As a practical result, the President would then be faced with the predicament of either vetoing the entire appropriation if he finds some of its purposes wasteful or undesirable, or approving the entire appropriation so as not to hinder some of its legitimate purposes.”

After this extensive discussion, the Court said it agreed with the petitioners that the “item veto power of the President mandates that appropriation bills adopt line-item budgeting.”

But it stops there. If you go to the last pages of the decision, to its conclusion, you will find a disconnect: the Court did not require line-item budgeting.

Dispute in the Court

What happened?

In the en banc deliberations, we learned that the dispute focused on whether to include the discussion on the line-item veto and the need for line-item appropriations. Apart from the vote on the ponencia, the justices took a vote to retain the discussion in the decision except for 2. (Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr inhibited himself because his wife is a party-list member of Congress.)

In their separate opinions, Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and Justice Marvic Leonen opposed it.  

“The only question that appears to be a loose end in the ponencia was whether we still needed to have an extended discussion on lump-sums versus line-items for this Court to dispose of the main reliefs…” Sereno wrote, showing a disagreement in the Court on this matter. She stressed that the Court “made no doctrinal pronouncement that all lump-sum appropriations per se are unconstitutional.”

Sereno continued, “…the discussions on lump-sum appropriations, line-item appropriations, and item-veto power are premature.” 

Leonen was on the same side as Sereno on this point: “There may be no need for now, to go as detailed as to discuss the fine line between ‘line’ and ‘lump sum’ budgeting…it is a discussion which should be clarified further in a more appropriate case.”

After reading the Chief Justice’s opinion, her voice of dissent is palpable. She expounded lengthily on why the Court should not require Congress to do line-item budgeting and prohibit lump-sum appropriations. 

It was Justice Antonio Carpio who strongly argued for line-item budgeting. In his separate opinion, he wrote: “The President has a constitutional duty to submit to Congress only a line-item NEP [National Expenditure Program] without lump-sum expenditures, while Congress has a constitutional duty to enact only a line-item GAA [General Appropriations Act] without lump-sum appropriations.” 

Carpio extensively discussed the nature of lump-sum appropriations, citing that the “calamity fund,” “contingent fund,” and “intelligence fund” do not belong to this category because “they have specific purposes and corresponding amounts.”

Three other justices joined Carpio in his concurring opinion, namely Teresita Leonardo de Castro, Arturo Brion, and Roberto Abad. 

Brion, for his part, was a lone dissenter on the Malampaya Fund. He said that the development and exploitation of energy resources is so broad that the fund is considered a lump sum.

It appears that the PDAF decision is just the start of a cleaning-up process of the budget system. It may have set the ground for a new legal challenge, for taxpayers to question the constitutionality of lump-sum appropriations in the 2014 budget. – Rappler.com