A senator's sources of income These are the sources of income of a senator: 1.

Salary as senator P 90,000 based on the Salary Standardization Law. The gross amount is P90,000 a month but after deductions, the take-home pay is about P60,000 a month. 2. Honorarium as Senate officer the Senate officers are the Senate President, Senate Protempore, Majority Leader, and Minority Leader. 3. Office of the Senator, including :

Monthly funds for Personal Services Monthly funds for MOOE (Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses) Travel allowance (international) Capital Outlay Additional MOOE Permanent Committees Oversight Committees Commission on Appointments Senate Electoral Tribunal.

According to the 2011 COA Report, a regular senator, meaning one who is not a Senate officer, received some P43 million per annum. This income basically came from the funds for the Office of the Senator, plus the funds for permanent committees to which the senator belonged. But the Senate officials received additional income as follows:

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile P 71.7 million, or 166.30% more Senate Protempore Jinggoy Estrada P 9.3 million, or 21.69% more Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III P 9.3 million, or 21.64% more Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano P 10.2 million, or 23.67% more

Each regular senator is given funds in the approximate amount of P63.3 million per annum, but the senators collectively control and are accountable only for 47.49% of the total Senate budget. Here is the deep, dark secret: the Senate President controls the remaining 52.51% of the Senate budget, or the total amount of P 1.7 billion for 2013. Thus, when Enrile was Senate President, he controlled over 50% of the Senate budget. But he proved that with great power comes great conceit, and perhaps megalomania.

COA data I obtained these figures covering the period January to December 2011 from the COA. Here are the amounts from Senate funds paid to every senator in the descending order of the amounts: 1. Juan Ponce Enrile, P 118 million 2. Jinggoy Estrada, P 62 million 3. Vicente Sotto III, P 56 million 4. Alan Peter Cayetano, P 55 million 5. Antonio Trillanes IV, P 54.9 million 6. Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., P 49 million 7. Ramon Revilla, Jr., P 49 million 8. Francis Escudero, P 48.7 million 9. Gregorio Honasan II, P 47 million 10. Francis Pangilinan, P 46 million 11. Loren Legarda, P 44 million 12. Aquilino Pimentel III, P 43.9 million 13. Manuel Lapid, P 43.5 million 14. Ralph Recto, P 42 million 15. Pia Cayetano, P 42 million 16. Edgardo Angara, P 41.7 million 17. Teofisto Guingona III, P 41.5 million 18. Miriam Defensor Santiago, P 41 million

19. Manny Villar, P 40 million 20. Sergio Osmena III, P 37.6 million 21. Panfilo Lacson, P 37 million 22.Franklin Drilon, P 34.9 million 23. Joker Arroyo, P 31.8 million To summarize, the senator who received and spent the most Senate funds was Senator Enrile, with P118 million for the year 2011 alone. The senator who spent the smallest amount for that year was Senator Arroyo at P 31.8 million. The rest of the senators received more or less some 40 million for the year, including myself with P 41 million. I have given you a table of the sources of income of a regular senator. My figures are based on averages, because senators have variable number of staff, variable number of memberships in oversight committees, and other dissimilarities. The funds for monthly expenses in the Office of the Senator consist of the following:

Capital outlay P 16 million Travel allowance P 59 million Savings If the Office of the Senator is able to set aside savings, they are realigned as additional MOOE. Additional MOOE The additional MOOE for each office of the senator is distributed upon discretion of the Senate President. Traditionally, this amount comes from the budget of the unoccupied office of the 24thsenator. The permanent committees of the Senate deal with their savings and with liquidation using the same procedure as the Office of the Senator. With oversight committees, usually the annual budget is fromP 5 million to P 38 million. Most of the oversight committees have a budget of some P 10 million to P20 million. There are also honoraria for the chair and members of oversight committees which are listed as extraordinary and miscellaneous expenses, also known as EME.

If a senator is a member of the Commission on Appointments, he is given P 50,000 per month as additional MOOE.

Recommendations No. 1 The tradition is that the Senate President enjoys discretion in the grant of additional MOOE to every senator. However, last Christmas, Mr. Enrile sought to exclude four senators, including myself, from the grant of additional MOOE in the sum of P 1.6 million for each senator. As far as I know, no senator who received this amount questioned this scandalous exercise of discretion, which is a plainly partisan political act. I shall have more to say about this anomaly, in my privilege speech after Congress opens, as soon as I am medically fit to attend sessions. As a lawyer specializing in constitutional law and a former trial judge, I believe that the issue of Mr. Enriles overt and admitted partiality in the use of public funds is a justiciable issue, for the Constitutions defines judicial power as the duty of the courts to, among others, determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the government. The Senate President, like any other public official, is prohibited from abusing his discretion by making personal dispositions, based on his personal sentiments and violative of the Equal Protection Clause. Based on the grave abuse of discretion exercised by the former Senate President, it is time to remove from the Senate President the power to control over 50 percent of the total Senate budget. I have already said that for 2011 alone, he received as his personal income alone the gargantuan sum of P118 million. Mr. Enrile should be held accountable for 52.8 percent of the total Senate budget for every year that he was Senate President. No. 2 Members of the so-called oversight committees, which are bicameral with members from both the House of Representatives and the Senate, received honoraria which I believe are excessive. A senators annual gross salary is someP1 million. But on the average, a senator is a member of seven oversight committees. Thus, he receives P 2.5 million annually in so-called extraordinary and miscellaneous expenses or EME. The EME that he receives is more than double his salary, which is not equitable. I humbly propose that the EME for oversight committees should constitute no more than 50 percent of a senators salary.

No. 3 Today, the Senate is rethinking the previous policy of Mr. Enrile, that certain amounts received by a senator could be liquidated by simply signing a certification that the money has been spent. The new Senate that opens this July will have the power to retain or to reform the system. This will need the majority vote of the senators. For my part, I believe that starting with this new Congress, it is better to adopt the new rules proposed by COA that expenditures for the items called Capital Outlay (or CO), Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (or MOOE), and Personal Expenses (or PS), should be liquidated by receipts and other supporting documents. Expenditures should be made only for account items which are specified by COA. Non-supported expenditures should be disallowed. Savings, which were previously realigned as additional MOOE, should be returned to the Senate. I did this in good faith during my first year as senator, but was roundly attacked by my colleagues who resented what I did, because it showed how much they kept for themselves. No. 4 My strongest recommendation is that the practice of giving the Senate President the discretion to release additional MOOE funds for each office of the senator should be removed. Just because one senator has left his office is no reason to avail of the monies allocated for his office, as additional MOOE. It makes the additional MOOE the personal pork barrel of the Senate President. In the hands of a corrupt Senate President, this discretionary power over additional MOOE becomes a tool not only of corruption but also of oppression, and of ugly politics.

PROJECT IN SOCSCI2
Vhener Base 2PSY2 Sir Billy De Guzman