Critics of Vice President Sara Duterte in the House of Representatives called her a "brat" and "entitled" for chiding members of a congressional committee scrutinizing her office's previous and upcoming budget.

"Only now that we saw a resource person dictating a committee [that] has rules to be followed and that members of the House should be free to ask questions," ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro said in Filipino in an interview on Wednesday.

"She must stop being a brat because this is a national budget. If she got used to [acting like that in] her previous work [at the local government], she would not be able to do it at the national level," she lamented.

Castro, a member of the Makabayan bloc, was referring to Duterte's demeanor at Tuesday's hearing of the House Committee on Appropriations into her proposed P2.037 billion allocation for the fiscal year 2025.

Prior to the interpellation, Duterte already informed Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo, the panel's presiding officer and senior vice chairperson, that she would not answer questions about her proposed budget.

"I would like to forego the opportunity to defend the budget in a question-and-answer format. I will leave it up to the House to decide on the budget submitted. We will just waste time here. The answers will be repetitive," Duterte said.

The VP later went ballistic when lawmakers started to ask how she utilized in 2022 her P125 million confidential funds, of which P73 million was disallowed by the Commission on Audit (CoA).

If not repeatedly refusing to answer questions, Duterte would provide generic responses, which irked panel members and later resulted in a heated exchange.

"To be honest, we didn't get an answer [from her]. Rather, [she] faced us as if she was feeling entitled. Only now have I seen a resource person treat congressmen like that," Manila Rep. Joel Chua said in a separate interview on Wednesday.

Both Castro and Chua justified the line of questioning of their colleagues about the confidential funds, saying scrutinizing the budget is part of their mandate.

"There was no notice of disallowance in the past [budget deliberations and] we only got it now, so we only asked now," Chua averred.

"Does she not want accountability? Does she not want transparency? As I've said, the notice of disallowance came, so of course, she must also explain it to the public," Castro stressed.

Based on the CoA's notice of disallowance, P69.8 million of the P73 million was used for reward payment (P10 million), payment of reward of various goods (P34.857 million), and payment of reward of medicines (P24.93 million).

Meanwhile, the P3.5 million was used to pay chairs, desktop computers, and printers.

CoA said the use of P69.8 million funds was disallowed due to OVP's non-submission of documents evidencing the success of information gathering and/or surveillance activities to support the acknowledgment receipts for payments of rewards in cash, various goods, and medicines.

Likewise, the CoA stated that the OVP failed to specify that the P3.5 million was intended for confidential operations or activities.

The OVP's P125 million confidential funds were part of the P221.42 million contingent fund of the Office of the President transferred to Duterte's office in 2022.

Opposition lawmakers earlier claimed it was unconstitutional since there was no line item in the OVP's 2022 budget on confidential funds in the 2022 General Appropriations Act.

Duterte told the appropriations panel that she decided to come alone and not bring other OVP officials after receiving information that panel members would follow a "script" to question her use of confidential funds.

"She feels like she's an underdog because she didn't have anyone next to her. It's like she really planned to have no one next to her [so] there's no one to question. She is the one with the script. What she said seems scripted like an AI (artificial intelligence)," Castro said.

Other panel members also blew a fuse over Duterte's lack of respect for transparency checks and balances regarding her budget utilization.

The committee eventually moved to defer the OVP's budget hearing on 10 September.