Who’s the bicam viper?

A can of worms may spill out before the 20th session of Congress opens with regards to the bicameral conference committee’s final draft of the budget.

Nosey Tarsee got information that the House version of the 2025 General Appropriations bill was complete and did not contain blanks.

When the bill went through the bicameral conference committee (bicam), the P80-billion budget for the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) was slashed by half and the controversial Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) was defunded of the previously proposed P74.43-billion subsidy for 2025.

It turned out that one of the bicam kingpins were responsible for the blank items in cahoots with his usual tandem who is a perennial presidential also ran.

The flagship anti-poverty program, Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), which has a structured implementation and is supported by a law, was defunded by P50 billion. The free tuition law also suffered a considerable reduction in the Department of Education’s (DepEd) budget.

The argument presented at the bicameral conference committee, where the funds were reallocated, was that these agencies have a poor absorptive capacity.

Removing PhilHealth’s subsidy was rationalized as a form of penalty since the agency failed to use earlier state financing aid efficiently.

The move came after the bicam met and sourced funds for the unprogrammed appropriations (UA) that were used as a conduit for the pork barrel projects to satiate legislators’ hunger for poll money.

The blank items in the budget may turn out to be a conspiracy between high-level officials in the Cabinet and the bicam.