Lawmakers inserting funds whenever they can

Batas Mauricio . 

I THINK congressmen and senators should stop trading accusations against each other over alleged fund insertions by some of them in the 2019 national budget, allegedly to favor their respective pet projects. The more vile they try to hurl against their fellow lawmakers in a twin effort to make the accusers look good, and to make the accused devilish in appearance, the more it gets clearer that all of them are themselves guilty of greed.

What these lawmakers should be doing is simple: if there are insertions really in the budget for this year and they were illegally made or were done in gross violation of the Constitution or of existing laws, then they must furiously work to remove those insertions no matter who the congressman or the senator that made them.

The problem however is that, many lawmakers are clashing on this issue because of envy–after learning that the insertions of other lawmakers were much higher than their own insertions, the lawmakers whose insertions were much lesser have been trying very hard to either increase their own insertions, or slash down the insertions of their colleagues. Clearly, this was the reason why they are now fighting against each other. Greed and envy are behind all these!

The Bible has a very relevant, if terrifying, explanation about this phenomenon, in its James 4:16. Let us read that entire passage, for better understanding of our lawmakers’ apparent irrational behavior on fund insertions: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.

“You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?

“Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: `God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble’…”

If the truth be told, lawmakers who have engaged in name-calling and mud-slinging against one another over this issue of fund insertions in the 2019 budget have become the laughing stock of many people. The accusations and counter-accusations they have made only served to unmask them as officials who are after their own interests by and large. The nation is truly at the losing end with lawmakers like them.

I am certain they will all have their come-uppance, sooner or later, with fearful punishments coming from our God and Savior whose Name is Jesus. The fact is that, with what they have been doing inserting people’s money for projects intended to benefit no one and nothing else but their own welfare and interest, they were violating commandments like, first, loving God with all their hearts, minds, and souls, and, second, loving others as they love themselves.

These lawmakers have also disregarded God’s command against judging others, noticing the plank in the eyes of their adversaries but not paying attention to the mud splashed in their faces. They may not be experiencing as of the moment the penalties that God has commanded for their kind of transgressions, but because God is a just God who will fulfill what He has vowed or promised or commanded, certain retribution will come upon these lawmakers, sooner or later!