Budget back to form

The signing of the 2025 national budget — amounting to P6.32 trillion — included a Palace commitment to significantly reduce pork barrel insertions that would be subjected to the presidential veto.

However, this failed to satisfy critics who believed the budget was primarily designed for election purposes, particularly with the inflated unprogrammed funds.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was caught between his commitment to have the budget approved before the end of the year — thereby avoiding a reenactment of this year’s budget — and the growing opposition to the pork-laden appropriations measure.

Mr. Marcos took 10 days from the original 20 December schedule to review the budget and trim the excess pork from it.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said certain items and provisions in the budget bill would be vetoed by the President “in the interest of the public welfare, to conform with the fiscal program, and in compliance with laws.”

Palace sources said nearly P194 billion in insertions would be subject to removal through presidential power.

The President’s thorough review came amid allegations the 2025 national budget was the worst ever as it catered to the political agenda of members of Congress.

When asked about the budget that came out of the bicameral conference committee, Sen. Imee Marcos uttered sarcastically, “May himala! (There was a miracle!).”

She was among the senators who refused to sign the final version of the budget bill that was transmitted to President Marcos, insisting that it be returned to Congress due to its defects.

She called it a “very bad budget.”

The Makati Business Club on Saturday issued a manifesto pointing to the several insertions and realignments that were apparently meant to increase pork barrel allocations such as in the inflated budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

It has been revealed that legislators indulged in two rounds of pork barrel insertions: the first during the preparation of the National Expenditure Program and the second during the bicameral conference committee (bicam).

Behind the closed doors of the bicam meeting, the horse-trading resulted in pork insertions that both the Senate and the House of Representatives partook of in the election-year budget.

The budget must conform to the provisions of the Constitution and be within the amount of the National Expenditure Program that the Executive proposed.

The bastardized budget could not be hidden even by members of the bicameral conference committee, none of whom came out to say that they were proud of the output of what is referred to as the third chamber of Congress.

Since Congress is constitutionally prohibited from increasing the appropriations in the President’s proposed budget, the bicam slashed the budgets for agriculture, education, health and social protection.

The bicam reduced the budget for agriculture by a massive P43.2 billion, or P20 billion from the Department of Agriculture and P23.2 billion from the National Irrigation Administration.

The bicam then tried to insert P860.5 billion in pork barrel projects — P487.5 billion in realignments and P373 billion in unprogrammed funds.

No one in the opaque budget deliberation body protested the juggling of funds since both sides of the legislature were buttered.

In the bicam, the House gave itself an additional P17.3 billion and the Senate an extra P1.1 billion.

The most glaring realignment was P288.6 billion tacked onto the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) which brought its budget to a massive P1.11 trillion for 2025.

Budget watchdogs said this was widely suspected to be more pork barrel projects, which legislators in the two chambers “barefacedly inserted on top of what they already lobbied for during the executive budget preparation process from January to July 2024.”

After the bicam deliberations, the DPWH’s budget grew larger than the P906.9 billion combined budgets of the Department of Education at P737.1 billion, State University and Colleges at P122.2 billion, Commission on Higher Education at P26.9 billion, and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority with P20.7 billion.

Thus, instead of a single loading of pork, the members of Congress helped themselves to two, highlighting the rising greed in the hallowed halls of the legislature.