[OPINION] Stopping ‘suboptimal’ and unlawful budgets 

As a important governance software to information nationwide growth, the finances and the way it’s decided and deployed usually function a political weapon.  The congressional quad committee had legitimate causes to scrutinize Vice President and then-education secretary Sara Duterte’s appropriation and use of confidential funds.  

This didn’t deter Duterte followers from dismissing its investigation as politically-motivated. The tables turned when the 2025 finances got here beneath hearth. The Dutertes rapidly tried to recuperate misplaced floor by making an attempt to take a management position in the reason for finances reform that they had resisted.

Neither occasion comes with pristinely spotless arms. The controversies thus engaged and enraged extra folks able to declare, “A pox on each homes.”  

A broad-based coalition of Clergy and Residents for Good Governance (CCGG) known as for an “indignation rally” on the EDSA Shrine on January 31 to protest the abuse of the finances course of. It has enlisted teachers and activists, businessmen and bishops, non-government and other people’s organizations, and even navy professionals alarmed on the persevering with cuts on modernization tasks. 

Data fueled indignation, as finances consultants shared their dismay and alarm over the manipulation of the finances course of. Former senator Frank Drilon declared the 2025 finances extra “corrupted and mangled” than any he had seen in 24 years within the legislature. Former finances secretary Florencio Abad famous that every one three Marcos Jr. budgets (2023-25) had suffered mangling, successively lowering funds by P219 billion, P449.5 billion, and P373 billion, respectively. 

The mangler was the congressional bicameral convention committee (bicam), which conducts the ultimate evaluation and drafting of the finances. As soon as signed by the president, their variations turn out to be regulation.  

Mangling was achieved by shifting cash from objects beneath Programmed Funds to people who could be carried out provided that the federal government discovered extra sources and, due to this fact, listed beneath Unprogrammed Funds. 

Programmed Funds presumably coated prices thought-about precedence for nationwide safety and growth, in addition to inside authorities’s monetary sources and capability to implement. This shifting of funds raised the query of gainers and losers from the adjustments.  

Sadly, businessman Zaldy Co, party-list Ako Bikol congressman, pleading well being points, resigned his chairmanship of the appropriations committee and will keep away from accountability for explaining the rationale and historical past of the funds diversion. 

Accessible information present that the bicam didn’t neglect to extend the Home finances by P29.4 billion in 2024 and 2025, whereas awarding a measly P3.1 billion to the Senate, decrease than the P5 billion given to the President’s workplace.  

International-assisted tasks suffered the largest blow in 2024, dropping P242.1 billion to basic public works packages, whose flood management finances rose to P245 billion. Funds flowed from deliberate, strategic, infrastructure investments to tasks notoriously troublesome to watch and consider and, due to this fact, extra weak to fraud.  

Within the 2024-25 social providers sector, the bicam reduce the PhilHealth, well being, labor, and social welfare budgets by P273 billion, transferring funds from examined packages to spice up neighborhood empowerment and self-reliance, like 4Ps (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program), to new, ayuda-type initiatives which obtained P179.6 billion.  

These tasks arguably addressed affirmative motion, social amelioration targets. However the switch once more took funds from tasks with clear eligibility and consequence metrics to people who, missing them, allowed politicians a better position of their distribution as dole-outs.

Over the primary three years of the Marcos Jr. administration, bicam finances cuts amounted to P1.015 trillion. It’s exhausting to think about what one trillion pesos means. 

Contemplate how that quantity may have affected the nation’s poverty incidence. A household of 5, based on the federal government, wants P12,000/month to help itself. A trillion pesos would have sustained such households for 2 years — had there been an efficient technique to transfer the cash on to the estimated 3 million households dwelling under the poverty line, as a substitute of leaving the funds beneath the management of 200 legislators.  

How a lot of such funds would trickle right down to rightful recipients turns into troublesome to find out. However the system perpetuates a tradition of patronage that compels folks in have to plead for help as supplicants from officers they elect into energy.

Efforts to revive bicam cuts within the 2025 finances that Marcos Jr. conceded was “suboptimal” didn’t appease critics; they thought-about it additionally unlawful.  Prescind from the unproven declare of former president Duterte that the finances handed with clean objects. Authorized consultants have centered on extra contestable points. 

First, the bicam can complement current finances objects. It can not create new objects from zero, like AKAP, which had been beforehand denied funding.  

Second, the Common Appropriations Act can not override particular legal guidelines, equivalent to those who restrict the switch of PhilHealth subsidies or the funds of the Philippine Deposit Insurance coverage Company (PDIC) levied from banks to guard their depositors. 

Third, a direct position within the implementation of funding packages — as displayed within the distribution by Speaker Martin Romualdez of ayuda funds in a shopping center — violated the Supreme Court docket choice prohibiting congressional pork barrel tasks.  

Marcos had cause to complain concerning the mangling of his budgets. However his state of affairs remembers the outdated lesson: “idiot me as soon as, disgrace on you; idiot me twice, disgrace on me.” Blame the primary deception on the deceiver, who did one thing he shouldn’t have accomplished and was not anticipated to do. Falling prey to the identical trick a second time, the sufferer may be blamed for lack of vigilance.   

However Marcos didn’t complain in 2023, 2024 and, in 2025, solely after public protests. When the deception succeeds a 3rd time, ought to we proceed to explain the deceived occasion as a sufferer? Or as an confederate in a conspiracy to affect the 2025 elections with dole-outs?

A brand new Congress takes over in 2026. Ought to the finances shell recreation succeed a fourth time, who can we blame, if not ourselves? We once more did not elect in 2025 leaders we will belief. To keep away from this failure is the avowed concern of the CCGG. – Rappler.com

Edilberto C. de Jesus is a senior analysis fellow on the Ateneo Faculty of Authorities.