Deafening DBM silence

Deafening DBM silence | Daily Tribune

The brazen manner by which the yearly budget was perverted could not have occurred without the collusion between the executive and the legislative branches, a conspiracy that unraveled with the testimonies of the pawns in the plunder of public money.

Without checks and balances, particularly in the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the manipulation of the budget that proliferated in 2023 went into overdrive in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).

Butch Abad, the budget secretary of the late President Noynoy Aquino, said that what baffled him was that no one in government questioned what was going on.

“That’s exactly what puzzles me — those who should have spoken up about this didn’t say anything. At the very least, there should have been some protest,” Abad said.

“So, basically, all of them bear responsibility — the members of the House, the senators, and the executive who signed off on it. Didn’t the DBM have an obligation to speak out? That’s their job,” Abad said.

He particularly mentioned the funds for foreign-assisted projects, which were deprioritized and placed under the unprogrammed appropriations (UA).

“What are we supposed to present to the lenders if the money for those projects was stolen? That’s a huge issue,” he pointed out.

What bugs Abad the most is that the reallocation of funds “started in 2023, was repeated in 2024, and kept on going in 2025.”

Following the budget process closely, the manipulations become embedded during the ratification of the bicameral conference committee report.

When the General Appropriations Bill is submitted, the Cabinet, especially the economic managers, can compare it with the National Expenditure Program to spot the changes.

“Then, when the President sees, let’s say, P5 billion slashed from [his own office’s] budget, he can’t just veto it. Because if the President vetoes it, the money set aside for those projects with reduced funding would revert to the National Treasury’s general fund,” Abad said.

The option for the executive is to prepare a supplemental appropriations bill and use it to re-fund the projects that lost their allocations in the bicam.

“They can submit that to Congress, basically like submitting a new budget. That way, the diverted funds wouldn’t be able to push through, and the projects would still get funded. But even that wasn’t done, not in any of the three years this happened,” Abad explained.

In the 2025 GAA, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. vetoed P194 billion while retaining most of the insertions and items added to the UA.

Abad said that historically, the National Expenditure Program has been approved by Congress with no significant changes, except during the financial crisis in the 1990s, the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022, and the budget reenactments from 2001 to 2010.

A weak checks and balances mechanism allowed the sleight of hand that resulted in the shady projects being inserted and securing priority funding in the budget, which enabled the legislature to overstep its bounds.

“Then, of course, the legislature will keep doing it. Because first, their power grows, and second, their benefits grow. And that’s exactly what happened for three straight years, without a single complaint, objection, or protest from the executive,” Abad said.

The biggest mystery is what kept President Marcos Jr. from pushing back, even though Congress was usurping the executive’s role in the budget preparation.