Veto UA or face SC suit

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s expected signing today, Monday, of the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA) will pave the way for the national budget to be questioned before the Supreme Court for pork insertions.

House Senior Deputy Minority Leader Edgar Erice said the President can forestall such action by vetoing the entire P243 billion in Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) branded “shadow pork” by budget watchdogs.

Erice, among the staunch proponents calling for the abolition of the UA in this year’s proposed P6.793 trillion budget, said a petition is ready and will be filed if Marcos releases the standby funds, which are projected to be highly vulnerable to corruption.

Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) secretary general Rovik Obanil said pork-like allocations and insertions continue to appear in the budget.

Despite the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam and the long-running Napoles cases, pork continues to resurface, he added.

“We thought that after that massive scandal, this issue would finally be resolved. Instead, they found new ways to conceal it,” according to Napoles.

FDC’s position is that the President should veto this budget because “problematic provisions remain and it does not address our urgent needs.” “It should be returned to Congress, cleaned up, and reworked so that the 2026 budget truly serves the people and the country,” according to Obanil.

“My problem is the constitutionality of the Unprogrammed Appropriations. If the president does not veto it, my legal team [….] and I are ready to challenge it in the Supreme Court so that once and for all, its constitutionality can be put to rest,” the Caloocan lawmaker said.

The constitutionality of the 2025 GAA, branded as the “most corrupt” budget in history, was also questioned by several petitioners at the SC for featuring a bloated UA, from which fraudulent flood control projects were reportedly drawn in recent budgets.

The SC, however, has yet to hand down a ruling on the matter.

Although Erice recognized that the 2026 budget is “far better” than the three recent budgets passed by the Marcos administration, he argued that it remains susceptible to misuse because of the UA’s flexibility.

The UA serves as a standby fund outside the GAA, and the executive releases it only when there are excess revenues or when foreign grants or loans materialize to fund priority projects.

Typically, the UA is tapped for emergencies or when infrastructure projects, social aid programs, and other initiatives are required.

However, in the 2023 and 2024 budgets, Akbayan Representative Chel Diokno said a staggering P141 billion was drawn from UA to fund flood control projects, which are now at the center of a sweeping investigation into reports that they are substandard and “ghost,” or non-existent.

Erice, Diokno, and their colleagues in the minority bloc have rigorously petitioned Congress to scrap the UA, arguing that priority projects should be allocated to the programmed funds rather than the UA.

They contended that placing big-ticket projects, which are a priority, in the UA defeats the very purpose for which it was created: to address contingencies or unforeseen circumstances.

Furthermore, they argued that allocating such a large chunk of resources outside the GAA gives Malacañang a blank check, while robbing Congress of its oversight powers, fueling speculation of potential corruption.

Despite mounting calls to abolish it, the Bicameral Conference Committee, responsible for drafting the final version of the budget, remained unfazed and retained the P243 billion in UA in the 2026 budget.

Big-ticket projects derailed

Erice said that among the glaring examples is Congress’s practice of placing crucial expenditures, such as the equity of foreign loans, in the UA instead of programmed funds, considering them “mandatory obligations.”

In 2024 and 2025, P399 billion in projects were lodged in the UA, some of which were priority programs of the administration, according to the solon.

This specifically includes the Metro Manila Subway and the expansion of the Philippine National Railways, also known as the North-South Commuter Railway, flagship projects of the Marcos administration that are touted to transform urban transport before 2030.

These were foreign-assisted projects (FAPs) and were scheduled for completion in 2028 and 2029, respectively. But because Congress placed them in the UA, the lack of funding pushed the completion date to 2032, resulting in a nearly five-year delay.

“Because of this delay, we will have to pay commitment fees, the cost of materials will also increase, and the labor component will also become more expensive,” Erice explained.

Based on the Department of Transportation’s projections, the project cost is likely to increase by 20 percent. This means the two railway projects, with a combined cost of P1.3 trillion, will incur a whopping P260 billion in additional expenses because Congress did not fund their equity.

He claimed that these projects were derailed because Congress prioritized funding flood control projects, rock netting, cat’s eye, and solar street lights, where kickbacks are common and much easier to obtain.

“That is why this is unprecedented in the history of Congress. There were massive insertions, diversions, and amendments that reached P1.45 trillion in three years,” Erice stated. “That never happened in any administration.”

Initially, under the House-approved GAB for 2026, a big chunk of the UA will go to FAP and Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure and Social Programs, or SAGIP, with P97.3 billion and P80.9 billion, respectively.

However, due to backlash, House appropriations committee chairperson Mikaela Suansing agreed to remove P35 billion in infrastructure projects from SAGIP, effectively turning it into a SAP.

Opposition lawmakers, on the other hand, remained adamant that there’s no point in defunding infrastructure from SAGIP if the allocation will be merely realigned to FAP, whose projects are mainly infrastructure-related and have long been associated with kickbacks and corruption.

‘Pork-laden’ budget

Over the weekend, a coalition of multi-sectoral groups, namely, the Roundtable for Inclusive Development and the People’s Budget Coalition, issued a last-minute petition to Marcos to veto P633 billion worth of “pork barrel.”

The groups said it has three types: shadow, soft, and hard.

The “shadow pork,” or UA, accounts for the largest share of the P633 billion, followed by “soft pork,” or politician-discretionary programs such as “ayuda” (cash payouts) and medical aid, at P210 billion.

This includes, among others, the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations and the Medical Assistance for Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients, which were earmarked P63.9 billion and 51.6 billion, respectively, or more than double from the initial allocation approved under the National Expenditure Program — the President’s budget.