During an election year, the budget assumes a different character. Those who crafted it anticipate a bigger fiscal space since earnings are projected to be higher due to election spending.

Such expectations are also taken advantage of in the crafting of the General Appropriations Bill through the insertion of pork barrel funds that may find their way into the regular allocations for agencies.

Regular projects are then relegated to “unprogrammed” items for which the government would have to look for sources of funding. The presumption is that the cash surplus would allow the implementation of the projects.

Nonetheless, the unprogrammed items that were bumped off to make way for the pork have to be funded since these are essentially critical items that lost their priority in favor of the pork.

The bicameral conference committee, made up of members of the Senate and the House of Representatives and mockingly called the third chamber of Congress, is where most of the pork insertions happen.

According to a former budget official in the administration of the late President Noynoy Aquino, allocations were ramped up P288.65 billion to the Department of Public Works and Highways, P18.79 billion to Congress, and P10.6 billion to local government units — all suspected of being illegal pork barrel funds.

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel, or any other discretionary fund similar to it, was unconstitutional.

To make way for the pork barrel, the bicam denied the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) a P74.43 billion subsidy, reduced by P50 billion the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) budget, slashed P36 billion from the pension and gratuity fund of state employees, deleted Department of Social Welfare and Development programs worth P33.05 billion, took P25.8 billion from Department of Health projects, and reduced Department of Transportation funding by P16.68 billion.

The Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP), a very vague program of the DSWD, received P26.159 billion after the bicam thwarted efforts in the Senate to defund it.

The program provides dole-outs to workers who earn less than what is sufficient for their families, which could be every Filipino small worker.

Also siphoned off were P26.91 billion from the Commission on Higher Education, P20.02 billion from Department of Agriculture projects, P18.01 billion from the Department of Labor and Employment budget, P15.11 billion from the subsidies to other government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs), and P11.57 billion from the Department of Education for its critical computerization program.

The former budget official said P373 billion was placed under unprogrammed appropriations that comprise big-ticket infra projects, such the Metro Manila Subway, that are supposed to be reflected in the government’s budget.

Lawmakers brazenly deprioritized these big infra projects to make room for their pork allocations they lodged in the DPWH.

What was done was unprecedented in its brazenness in that they had to reduce the budgets of so many agencies because Congress is barred by the Constitution from altering the total budget as set in the President’s budget proposal or the National Expenditure Program.

The clear rape of the budget was participated in by members of both the Senate and the House who made it seem that their obligation was to keep the secret within the fellowship of thieves behind closed doors in the bicam.