MANILA, Philippines?Lost in the din of Monday?s hostage-taking tragedy, the first national budget proposed by the Aquino administration contains encouraging proof that it is putting real money where its mouth is. Taking office with an impressive electoral mandate for genuine reform, the administration has presented a deadline-beating, bureaucracy-taming budget marked by the promise of real change.

It is by no means a perfect budget. The legislative pork barrel has not only been retained; it has been restored to its full size: P200 million for each senator, P70 million for each congressman. The President will continue to enjoy a P500-million intelligence fund. And automatic debt servicing continues to eat into a substantial slice of the budget pie (22.6 percent, or more than a fifth of the total). We can understand the politics behind these and similar provisions: the pork barrel, made more palatable by limiting legislators to a menu of initiatives aligned with the reform-oriented budget, is a necessary instrument of negotiation with the very people who will turn the budget bill into law; President Aquino, who despite his personal popularity has many political enemies, needs access to special funds now that he has ceded control of the President?s Social Fund; the debt burden is heavy but unavoidable. We hope the second budget will see less need for the rationalizations of politics.

But if the art of governance lies in the actual allocation of scarce resources to the necessary priorities, then the proposed 2010 budget is artful indeed. Two examples should suffice.

First, the emphasis on education is encouraging. At P207.3 billion, the proposed outlay for the Department of Education, in the words of the President?s well-thought-out budget message, shows ?a sharp increase of 18.4 percent (P32.3 billion) from its budget of P175.0 billion this year, attributed to the construction of 13,147 classrooms and the creation of 10,000 teaching positions.? The message adds, with justification: ?This will be the biggest increase allocated for education in over a decade.?

A little less than half of that major, major increase will pay for the new classrooms and the 10,000 new teachers. A total of P8.6 billion (up from P7 billion in 2010) will fund various scholarship grants and training programs, affecting almost 1.2 million beneficiaries. (The budget message was careful to say that the highly controversial proposed extension of the basic education program from 10 years to 12 was still under study.)

Second, the budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development has more than doubled, from P15.4 billion to P34.3 billion. Again, the President?s budget message sums up the change best. ?The remarkable increase provides for the second phase implementation of the KALAHI-CIDSS Project in 96 municipalities, conditional cash transfers to 2.3 million households, rice subsidy, and pensions for indigent senior citizens.? (KALAHI-CIDSS stands for Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services, which helps the country?s poorest municipalities.)

The once-controversial practice of providing poor families with direct subsidies, with certain conditions attached, has been proven effective in recent years. The proposed 2011 budget nearly triples the amount allocated for so-called conditional cash transfers, from P10 billion this year to P29.2 billion next year. The increase in large part is designed to fund the expansion of the scope of program coverage from 1 million household beneficiaries to 2.3 million.

There are some initiatives which, despite larger outlays, still seem woefully underfunded. The Witness Protection Program, for instance, has seen its budget raised from P84 million to P151 million?a rapid rise, in relative terms, but still only enough to support a few hundred witnesses.

But the two examples from DepEd and DSWD, plus many other changes in the budget, show that, whether through long-term initiative or short-term measure, the administration seems ready to meet its mandate of reducing poverty and governing responsively.