“We wish him the best of luck and prayer that 2011 will be a good year.
We gave it all to him; we hope he will succeed,” said Senior Deputy Minority Leader Danilo Suarez.

Suarez stressed that with the Aquino government given all the funds it needs to fight poverty, improve the economy and move the country to progress, the President will only have himself to blame if he fails.

“I see no reason for him to fail,” the opposition stalwart said.

Suarez said the minority group in the Lower House has vowed to be “non-obstructionist” as far as its relationship with the Aquino administration is concerned.

The House opposition had pushed for a debt cap provision in the budget that Aquino rejected.

With former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo among its members, the minority bloc in the chamber was also key proponent of the budget provision that would allot for education and health any savings realized from the P21 billion conditional cash transfer fund.

Social Watch Philippines (SWP), meanwhile, described the P1.645 trillion national budget, which is 6.8 percent higher than the P1.54-trillion this year as “problematic in many ways.”

“Even with such increase, however, citizens’ groups remain skeptical that such increase will suffice to finance government operations and fund anti-poverty programs that will actually trickle down to the poorest of the poor,” SWP, in a statement, said.

Leonor Magtolis-Briones, SWP lead convenor, brushed aside the early enactment of the budget.

“They put more emphasis on the time in signing into law the budget measure but not its content and substance,” Briones, a former national treasurer stressed.

Senator Joker P. Arroyo, a member of the Senate minority group, chided Aquino for being a virtual clone of former President Arroyo by following her presidential veto on a Congress-imposed 55 percent ceiling on debt borrowing embedded in the General Appropriations Act (GAA or national budget).

“President Noynoy and GMA are no different when it comes to borrowing money. They think alike. Both Presidents vetoed exactly the same limitations imposed by the 14th Congress on GMA and the present 15th Congress on P-Noy,” Arroyo said.

“Both Presidents do not want to limit their borrowing power. What is wrong with that? The provision does not tie the hands of the President to borrow. All he has to do is to ask Congress to increase the 55 percent (cap) of GDP (gross domestic product) to say, 60 percent of GDP,’’ the senator said.

Ben Rosario, Manila Bulletin