A collusion by members of Congress has resulted in the spectacular comeback of the pork barrel in the past three years.

Unprogrammed funds in the national budget, taken from essential projects, have made up the pork barrel which reached P1 trillion the past three years, according to former Senate president Franklin Drilon.

Under the pork barrel scheme — which the Supreme Court in 2013 ruled violated the Constitution — members of Congress were allocated funds for their local projects. Since then the pork has been resurrected in different ingenious ways.

Drilon explained that when the President prepares the budget, there are two parts that undergo review: the regular activities that are funded by taxes and other definite fund sources, and the unprogrammed projects and activities that can only be funded using excess revenues.

“What the members of Congress did was to move the activities in the programmed portion to the unprogrammed where the funding is not certain,” he pointed out.

Created, as a result, was an artificial fiscal space in which there are funds with no corresponding projects.

Drilon said this made it convenient for legislators to put in their pork barrel projects.

“They created the fiscal space and put in all their pork barrel,” according to the veteran legislator.

Thus, the pork barrel got funded with certainty, with definite sources of revenue. “This was a new way of funding the pork barrel,” Drilon said.

In the P6.352-trillion 2025 national budget, the unprogrammed portion was increased by P373 billion, consisting of projects deemed essential to the growth of the economy by the executive branch but which were moved to optional projects that rely on excess funds.

Drilon said members of Congress make sure a huge space is created in the budget yearly for pork barrel projects.

Thus, farm-to-market roads get priority over more essential projects such as bridges, Drilon pointed out. In 2024, P449.5 billion of such reallocations were made.

“This is a very serious concern that we should face,” Drilon underlined.

The national budgets from 2023 to 2025 contained more than P1 trillion in available pork barrel funds through the simple technique of replacing budget items.

The creation of the general appropriations law starts with a budget call, wherein the agencies are required to submit projects that should be funded after a careful study.

Drilon lamented that what happens after is that whatever study is done is thrown out the window and these projects are bumped off to the unfunded portion.

“The budget always operates on a deficit so where can you get excess funds for these?” he asked.

He said that vetoing the unprogrammed funds is only a cosmetic move since it does not do anything to the budget.

Only the P26 billion vetoed by the Department of Public Works and Highways was meaningful while the rest were meaningless, Drilon said.

The pork projects were all amendments introduced by Congress that were not found in the original budget proposal of the President and the Cabinet.

The President submits his budget, through the National Expenditure Program (NEP), to Congress where it is debated in both Houses.

A part of the process is the period of amendments, and it is at this stage that senators and congressmen introduce their pet projects.

Afterward, they go to the bicameral conference committee to reconcile the differences between the House and the Senate versions of the budget, and in this process, additional insertions are made.

By Drilon’s reckoning, the budget was deprived of P1 trillion worth of projects essential to maintaining the economic momentum and replaced with pet projects of senators and congressmen.

What came out as the General Appropriations Bill in the past three years was so different from the NEP of the President.

The pork barrel system was declared illegal by the Supreme Court. It should stay that way and the legislators must control their greed.