SENATOR Juan Edgardo ‘Sonny’ Angara on Wednesday said President Rodrigo Duterte’s last budget request should capture the urgency and the dimensions of the national recovery from the pandemic that he laid out during his final State of the Nation Address Monday.

“The budget puts the money where the rhetoric is,” Angara said.

He stressed that things should be done as fast as possible because the window to make the turnaround will not stay open for long.

The safe reopening of schools and other programs like vaccination, spending the budget and building infrastructure should be done at warp speed, the senator said.

“There are 338 days to June 30. ‘Yan ang araw na matatapos ang termino ng Pangulong Duterte. Kailangang mabilis ang implementasyon ng mga programa, hindi dahil ‘endo’ na siya, pero kailangan ng taumbayan na lugmok sa pandemya. ‘Yan naman ang mensahe niya sa SONA,” he said.

“There are two ways of viewing a clock. You can count the time remaining and just coast along.  Or work furiously and like those who travel to space, see it as a countdown to lift off,” the senator added.

He said the plans Duterte spelled out during his speech should end up in the proposed 2022 national budget, which Malacañang will send to Congress soon.

“If dreams don’t get funded, they’ll remain as such. Historically, the post-SONA challenge is how to translate the language of the SONA into budget language,” Angara stressed.

Angara described the 2022 budget as the major down payment that the country will make for the hard and long road to recovery.

He said the foundations for that recovery have been laid out through laws and programs that promote economic growth with social equity.