In 2013, the Supreme Court (SC) struck a decisive blow against the pork barrel system by ruling that the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) violated the Constitution.

The ruling was a triumph for accountability, rejecting lawmakers’ unchecked power to funnel public funds to pet projects or, worse, their pockets, which the P10-billion Janet Lim-Napoles scam laid bare.

Filipinos dared to hope that the era of discretionary slush funds was over. Yet, just over a decade later, the Special Account in the General Fund (SAGF) emerged.

Finance Secretary Ralph G. Recto defended the redirecting of so-called excess and idle funds of government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCC). This process was incorporated into the 2024 General Appropriations Act as crucial to accelerating the economic recovery.

A reversal would entail fiscal pressures, he claimed.

“The move is in line with the principles of our Medium-Term Fiscal Framework to ensure the country’s macro-fiscal stability,” he said.

Yet the petitioners seeking to halt the manipulation of the yearly budget to create room for discretionary funds for legislators said the SAGF was a calculated evolution of the abolished PDAF.

The PDAF handed P75 million to each member of the House of Representatives and P200 million to each senator to spend practically at their whim.

The SAGF, by contrast, is cloaked in the language of fiscal efficiency and executive prerogative.

Tucked into the GAA, it was made to appear as a tool for flexibility, raking in “excess” funds from government corporations like the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. to be tapped for unprogrammed appropriations.

Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra touted the SAGF as a “common sense” fix to fund urgent projects without swelling the P15.18-trillion national debt.

He insisted that 78 percent of the P60 billion siphoned from PhilHealth in 2023 will be used in health-related projects.

Without the line-item transparency of the budget, such spending would have to rely on vague assurances from a bureaucracy with a dismal track record when it comes to spending public funds.

The remaining 22 percent, or over P13 billion, is sucked into the SAGF’s black hole, free to bankroll anything from bridges to election-related spending.

Budget watchdogs described the SAGF as a “new scheme for massively funding the pork barrel.”

There is a marked difference with the SAGF in that control is vested in the executive while leaving room for backroom deals with pork-hungry legislators.

Unprogrammed appropriations (UA) had swelled to P281.9 billion in the 2024 GAA.

In previous SC sessions on the controversy, it was bared that through the bicameral conference committee, specific items, many of them crucial for the development thrust, were set aside and placed under the UA to make room for pet projects of members of Congress.

Thus, there was a need for a special provision in the GAA to allow the Department of Finance (DoF) to sweep up excess funds to ensure that the UA is funded.

The UA are supposedly contingent items that can only be realized if the revenue collections exceed the target or money is made available through borrowings.

The DoF then issued a circular creating the SAGF that became the repository for excess or idle funds.

Shielded by technocratic jargon, the SAGF oversees the sweeping up of funds for the UA.

The PhilHealth fund grab is the smoking gun of the maneuver to revive the pork barrel.

The special fund for health, supported by sin tax collections and contributions of Filipino workers, was meant to guarantee universal healthcare, a constitutional right.

DoF Circular 003-2024, however, considered unused subsidies through the years as “excess” or idle resources and these were funneled into the SAGF.

In probing the 2024 racket of the executive branch and the bicameral conference committee, the SC justices knew that the sleight-of-hand was a middle finger to its 2013 ruling that banned the pork barrel system.

The SAGF is a wicked circumvention of the SC ban on the PDAF.