Guingona v. Carague

Guingona v. Carague

G.R. No. 94571 April 22, 1991

Gancayco, J.

Facts:

The 1990 budget consists of P98.4 Billion in automatic appropriation (with P86.8 Billion for debt service) and P155.3 Billion appropriated under Republic Act No. 6831, otherwise known as the General Appropriations Act, or a total of P233.5 Billion, while the appropriations for the Department of Education, Culture and Sports amount to P27,017,813,000.00.

The said automatic appropriation for debt service is authorized by P.D. No. 81, entitled “Amending Certain Provisions of Republic Act Numbered Four Thousand Eight Hundred Sixty, as Amended (Re: Foreign Borrowing Act),” by P.D. No. 1177, entitled “Revising the Budget Process in Order to Institutionalize the Budgetary Innovations of the New Society,” and by P.D. No. 1967, entitled “An Act Strengthening the Guarantee and Payment Positions of the Republic of the Philippines on Its Contingent Liabilities Arising out of Relent and Guaranteed Loan by Appropriating Funds For The Purpose.

The petitioner seek the declaration of the unconstitutionality of P.D. No. 81, Sections 31 of P.D. 1177, and P.D. No. 1967. The petition also seeks to restrain the disbursement for debt service under the 1990 budget pursuant to said decrees.

Issue:

                Is the appropriation of P86 billion in the P233 billion 1990 budget violative of Section 29(1), Article VI of the Constitution?

Held:

                No. There is no provision in our Constitution that provides or prescribes any particular form of words or religious recitals in which an authorization or appropriation by Congress shall be made, except that it be “made by law,” such as precisely the authorization or appropriation under the questioned presidential decrees. In other words, in terms of time horizons, an appropriation may be made impliedly (as by past but subsisting legislations) as well as expressly for the current fiscal year (as by enactment of laws by the present Congress), just as said appropriation may be made in general as well as in specific terms. The Congressional authorization may be embodied in annual laws, such as a general appropriations act or in special provisions of laws of general or special application which appropriate public funds for specific public purposes, such as the questioned decrees. An appropriation measure is sufficient if the legislative intention clearly and certainly appears from the language employed (In re Continuing Appropriations, 32 P. 272), whether in the past or in the present.