The perversion of the national budget — which included the 2024 order to appropriate Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) funds — has not abated and was even exacerbated by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s order to return P60 billion of the total P89.9 billion that would have been pilfered.

In the crafting of the 2024 national budget, the Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam) made up of House and Senate leaders inserted a provision in the General Appropriations Act allowing then Finance Secretary Ralph Recto to seize the excess funds of PhilHealth, the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp., and other trust funds which could otherwise not be expropriated because they were for a specific purpose.

The provision needed to be embedded in the budget, as Recto, under the Constitution, had no authority to transfer savings or excess funds, which is the President’s domain.

The proviso also sought to skirt the constitutional requirement that only savings, not appropriations, could be transferred.

Retired Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said that in its order striking down the diversion of the PhilHealth funds, the Supreme Court ordered the government to include its restitution in the 2026 national budget.

The ruling, however, will result in Filipinos being scammed twice over, according to Carpio.

“If it will come from the budget, the taxpayers will be reimbursing PhilHealth for the funds that were seized” by the flood control crooks.

He said the right step would be to seek compensation from the flood control scammers.

“We were robbed, and then we’re the ones who will pay back what was stolen,” Carpio bemoaned. “The ones who stole the money should be the ones to return it.”

He said the maneuver to ransack PhilHealth began with Section 1(D) of the Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) in the 2024 national budget, a provision that was unique to that year’s outlay.

“We’re tracing who inserted it because that will give us a clue on who crafted this scheme,” Carpio said.

The suspects are then House Appropriations Committee Chair Zaldy Co., Senate Finance Committee head Grace Poe, Speaker Martin Romualdez and Senate President Chiz Escudero.

Carpio said that if the legislators intentionally crafted the law to insert Section 1(D) “so they could get at the PhilHealth funds and use them for the flood control contractors they favored, they can be held liable.”

However, criminal intent must be proven and Carpio admitted that this would be difficult when the legislators may claim good faith.

“There will be a paper trail. I’ve seen that in the House. There was a bill introduced by Albay Representative Joey Salceda to insert Section 1(D). We need to verify the subsequent events. It looks like it started in the House,” Carpio said.

He said that Recto, now the Executive Secretary, could argue that he merely implemented the law.

Recto had issued a directive for government-owned and controlled corporations, including PhilHealth, to surrender their excess funds to the Bureau of the Treasury.

Fiscal experts said the inflow to the National Treasury was treated as a new revenue source to trigger the funding for the UA.

Recto needed to raise more than P200 billion for strategic projects, but the 2024 national budget diverted funds toward legislators’ pet projects.

“The insertion traces back to Rep. Joey Salceda, who introduced a bill that included Section 1(D),” Carpio said.

The next step would be to prove bad faith — that they planned this from the start — to prevent the crooks from hiding behind the law and say that they acted in good faith.

Carpio said pinpointing who introduced Section 1(D) in the 2024 budget is a good start.

Catching the ringleader, who conveniently poses as a whistleblower, would be difficult, however, as government institutions have been co-opted to provide him cover.