I don’t know if, by the time of this column’s publication, the President would have signed the 2025 budget, but I wish he hadn’t yet. He said he would give it his John Hancock by the 30th, after reviewing the same, in reaction to the widespread public outrage at the fact that the General Appropriations Act appeared to have been screwed up, if it were not grossly unconstitutional.

You see, gentle readers, the Fundamental Law couldn’t have said it any more clearly: “The State shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment.”

Yet what did Congress do? It gave the Department of Public Works (DPWH) 1.11 trillion — TRILLION! — pesos in budgetary allocation, much higher than the Department of Education’s 737.08 billion pesos. Even if the Commission on Higher Education’s allotment of some P33 billion is added, it still would have the DepEd playing second fiddle to the DPWH. Now, which part of “highest budgetary priority” did our lawmakers not understand?

To add salt to the wound, P214 billion or so of the DPWH budget has been earmarked for the dreaded “flood control projects” controlled by members of Congress. If only such projects worked, few would complain. But these projects more often than not get washed away with the floods they are supposed to control.

Indeed, it is no secret that these programs have been consistent cash cows for both congressmen and contractors and, as time goes by, the two are swiftly becoming one and the same. If any flood is controlled by these projects, it is the flood of cash flowing into favored builders’ pockets.

Another bad thing that Congress did was it drastically slashed the budget of the Department of Transportation (DoTr) by almost P93 billion. At a time when traffic jams are getting worse by the day and more mass transport infrastructure are sorely needed, such deprivation may soon result in the nation’s capital being paralyzed by immobilized people.

Ironically, with all the heated rhetoric about not giving up an inch of our exclusive economic zone to Chinese encroachment, the modernization program of the Armed Forces of the Philippines was defunded to the tune of P15 billion. With the DoTr — under which the Philippine Coast Guard falls — also impoverished, I believe the lawmakers expect the Republic to resist Chinese sea vessels with slingshots, bamboo spears, and bows and arrows made in Tondo.

To make matters worse for our men in uniform, funds meant for their retirement suffered a huge decrease of P87 billion, while monies for the benefits of our government workers dipped by some P55 billion. PhilHealth, the country’s universal health insurer, was also deprived of P74 billion in subsidies.

In contrast, the Office of the President got a boost of P5.4 billion, P4 billion for “confidential funds.” The House members also voted themselves a bump of P16 billion. But the biggest grant of all was the P373 billion in “unprogrammed funds,” a clumsy euphemism for out-and-out dole outs controlled by a few in Congress and farmed out to their favored reelectionists and other candidates. This thinly-disguised massive vote-buying effort has taken, and taken much, from other departments, most especially education and health.

It is ominous that the President scheduled 30 December for the signing of the budget, the same date in 2015 when then President Aquino signed the anomalous supplemental budget for Dengvaxia, now the subject of multiple graft cases before the Sandiganbayan. It is a day when no one is looking, distracted as Filipinos are with preparations for the New Year and hung over from the Yuletide celebrations.

A perfect day to sneak past the people a budget that, in spite of a token review and adverse public protests, remains bad yet.