IT just makes sense.

A press release from the office of Senator Ralph G. Recto reaching our editorial desk said it all about the matter of government budget and disbursements. We’d rather let him say it unexpurgated (with just a couple of editing here and there for clarity.):

“The problem is not lavish spending but lack of spending. It isn’t ‘labis’ spending but ‘kulang’ spending.

“Government underspent P63 billion in the first 8 months of the year. It was supposed to spend P739.5 billion but ended up disbursing P676.4 billion from January to August.

There’s a fiscal surplus not because revenues were way above the target, but because expenditures were way below the program. The numbers are indisputable: Surplus is a result of belt-tightening.

“It can be likened to a father flaunting a fat bank account but only because all his children had stopped schooling and are only eating one a day. Our fiscal manager’s bragging rights are at the expense of canceled spending.”

“But it is not entirely the executive department’s fault.

“It was Congress that applied the brakes on spending when it didn’t pass the ’06 budget, thus forcing government to live on a lower ’05 spending ceiling. Without authority from Congress, the budget secretary’s hands are tied and can’t release due funds.

“Our finance men have no right to be unreasonably stingy, unless they want do deflate spending so as to conceal slippages in the revenue front. They should remember that new taxes were premised on their being plowed back to the peoples in terms of higher social services and infrastructure spending. Not to do so is to renege on that promise. The worst pain we can inflict on the people is to collect higher taxes from them without increasing expenditures for projects they deserve.”