Real pork enabler

Since the Supreme Court in a landmark 2013 decision ruled the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) --- really the legislative pork barrel — unconstitutional, other creative ways have been found to siphon money from the annual national budget.

The SC invalidated the PDAF because it created a post-enactment lump-sum fund that legislators could directly control, bypassing executive oversight.

The insertion of projects in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), or the Executive’s budget proposal, skirts the SC prohibition by operating within the pre-enactment appropriation phase, where Congress’ power to amend is explicitly allowed.

Thus, the responsibility for overseeing the budget process and preventing any manipulation falls on the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

Deputy Speaker Rep. Ronaldo Puno of Antipolo City alleged anomalies in the 2026 NEP, including the redundant funding of projects, pointing to government agencies and the DBM, apart from members of Congress, as the likely sources of the insertions.

Puno said Congress is given the expenditure program for the Department of Public Works and Highways for specific districts. At the start of the budget process, the district engineer creates a program that should be aligned with the government’s national infrastructure program.

“What we get is just the local part. We’re not engineers, so the district engineer makes the program, saying, ‘This is the project, this is the cost, this is where it’ll be done,’” Puno explained.

Members of Congress are allowed to add P150 million worth of projects each to the 2026 national budget.

Puno, however, said that in the draft they received from the DBM, suspicious entries were found, such as in Marikina City, where Rep. Marcelino Teodoro discovered entries in his district that were already completed.

In Antipolo City, flood projects in Barangays Mayamot, Munting Dilao and Mambugan, which were Puno’s priorities, were omitted from the NEP.

The trouble is, according to Puno, the cited projects are continuing programs that would stall if not funded.

Puno said projects worth hundreds of millions of pesos “that we don’t know where they came from” replaced the vital flood mitigation projects.

Based on Puno’s review of the NEP, a P70 million project was reduced to P1 million while others “were shuffled around.”

In the budgeting system in Congress, if something is found to be incorrect, an erratum is applied. Puno, however, worried that errata were often associated with insertions.

“If we don’t make errata, those irrelevant projects will be implemented, displacing the ones the people need,” he said.

Several other discrepancies were found, which led House leaders to consider “bringing it all to the President and to scrap the budget process entirely.”

In place of the NEP would be a draft obtained through zero-based budgeting, which means that all agencies would have to justify their projects to the President.

Among the dubious entries in the 2026 budget were 10 projects listed at P73 million each on one page.

“You don’t need to be a criminologist to harbor suspicions. That’s our problem — many things like this are coming up. For other agencies, we’re not involved in formulating their budgets; their finance people monitor their entries,” Puno said.

The culprit by default would be the legislators, as the flood control scandal has implicated senators and representatives allegedly in cahoots with the contractors who secured lucrative contracts.

Whether through neglect, incompetence, or complicity, the NEP for next year has glaring anomalies that can only be attributed to the DBM and the relevant agencies.

An overhaul of the yearly budget process should begin at the DBM, which is mandated to ensure the efficient allocation of funds collected from the people.

The outlawed pork barrel could not be resurrected without the DBM’s complicity.