Based on volumes of documents Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste posted on his social media page, Nosy Tarsee pieced together a system of budget insertions in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) amounting to P150 million each for members of the House of Representatives in the proposed P6.793-trillion 2026 national budget.

The insertion system allocates funds to every district representative and partylist group. From the start of the drafting of the NEP, each congressman had already has embedded pet projects.

Leviste said that even before the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) finalizes the NEP for submission to Congress, lawmakers have already submitted their budget insertions.

He said the proposed 2026 national budget amounts to P6.793 trillion and is scheduled for ratification on 29 December 2025.

The Cabral files, or documents handed to Leviste by the late Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Cathy Cabral, showed that the bicameral conference committee report already included P150 million worth of pet projects for each congressional district representative under the DPWH budget, as well as allocations for partylist groups.

On 10 June, Leviste said that prior to the submission of the NEP, lawmakers were asked to submit hard and soft projects for 2026, detailing allocations of P150 million for district representatives, P160 million for party-list district representatives, and P30 million each for soft projects.

Leviste stressed that it is dishonest to claim that congressmen do not submit projects at the NEP stage. He said every congressman has at least P150 million in DPWH budget insertions. Because of this, he challenged his fellow lawmakers to publicly disclose where their P150 million allocations in the NEP would be used, in the interest of transparency.

He added that both the House of Representatives and the DPWH have records of each lawmaker’s requests. Leviste further revealed that submitting budget requests before the NEP is finalized has long been a practice in the budgeting system.

He said he uncovered this after gaining access to the so-called “Cabral files” from former DPWH Undersecretary Catalina Cabral, which introduced the term “allocables” into the government’s budgeting framework.

According to these files, allocable funds totaled P401.3 billion in 2025, while non-allocable or outside-allocable funds exceeded P600 billion. Both items are convertible into pork barrel.

A transparent, insertion-free national budget remains a deception, according to the Cabral files.