“By their own admission, albeit begrudgingly,” Lacson said on Wednesday in reference to the 24 lawmakers, when he was asked whether the front-page Inquirer story on Dec. 20 confirmed that there was pork in the 2018 budget. Pork funds are allocations in the budget that finance pet projects of senators and congressmen. The Senate adopted Lacson’s proposal to lop off P50.7 billion from the budget of the DPWH for ROW acquisitions. He also pushed to slash P18.4 billion more from the DPWH budget over its failure to disaggregate the ROW cost in its infrastructure projects for 2018. But both allocations were eventually restored in the reconciled version of the budget, prompting Lacson to wonder about the amendments he had introduced when the reconciled measure was brought to the floor.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer December 21, 2017 23:23 UTC