In the tripartite system where the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary are considered co-equal branches of government, the one overarching principle in operation is called "checks and balances," which underlies the separation of powers. By Merriam Webster dictionary definition, it is "a system that allows each branch of a government to amend, override, or veto acts of another branch so as to prevent any one branch from exerting too much power or power beyond its authority."

Some recent developments put this principle into play. Let us take a couple of classic examples, to wit:

Firstly, those who may have listened to the deliberations where Rep. Rodante Marcoleta of the House of Representatives expressed obvious dissatisfaction over how Secretary Ted Herbosa was, quite indicatively, "(mis)managing" the funds of the Department of Health — state subsidy versus budget execution — have reason to worry why this is so. The amounts being referenced in the public hearing run in the billions, not just several hundred million, of taxpayer money.

How indeed should it come across if the "allotment is zero, percent obligation zero, total disbursement zero, percent disbursement zero" in the case of a P500-million allocation for cancer patients? Worse, how about P7.4-billion worth of medicines that expired, which the health secretary considered as even better for having been unused rather than otherwise?

This compelled the good Marcoleta to conclude, and rightly so, that "this is not the kind of accomplishment that people are expecting out of the Department of Health." In the good Herbosa's response, however, allusion was made to the claim — alibi actually — that what explained this is a disbursement process called "progress billing" in which a percentage of completion or incompletion (of a project) is shown only the following year.

Whether or not the explanation holds water, the fact remains that the health secretary's claim does not simply match the data in the DoH financial performance report itself as submitted to the Department of Budget and Management. There is, therefore, the problem of a pattern where the DoH does not spend what is allocated to it.

The DoH aside, it is easy to presume that in other line departments, the same pattern is followed. Come to think of it, we have been at this for the longest time and yet the Philippine system of budgeting at the national level leaves much to be desired.