Quit hijacking the budget

Quit hijacking the budget | Daily Tribune

The Palace went into full spin mode, branding the 2026 national budget signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as pork-free, but it ultimately appeared to do little more than “half-accommodate” legislators’ greed.

Executive Secretary Ralph Recto, widely seen as the architect of the plunder of reserve funds of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp., dismissed claims that the approved spending plan still contained “giniling,” or ground pork.

President Marcos vetoed P92.5 billion in Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) to reinforce fiscal discipline, transparency and accountability.

“Let me be clear, the unprogrammed appropriations are not blank checks. We will not allow the unprogrammed appropriations to be misused or treated as a backdoor for discretionary spending,” Marcos said in his budget message.

He explained that the release of UA funds can only be possible “when clearly defined triggers and tests are met and only after careful validation.”

The person sitting next to him, Recto, with his then cohorts in Congress, had tried to skirt these constitutional limits by inserting a provision in the 2024 General Appropriations Act (GAA) directing government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) to surrender their “excess funds” to the National Treasury. Such a transfer of funds would trigger the UA.

Marcos boasted that this year’s UA is the lowest since 2019. He even highlighted an additional P26.5 billion cut from the record-high P6.793-trillion expenditure plan.

Budget watchdogs said a complaint before the Supreme Court is being prepared to challenge the constitutionality of the new budget.

Drawing on Article 7, Section 22 of the Constitution, the petition will argue that a specific funding source must support each expenditure item.

“Whether it’s one peso or 100 billion, it’s still unconstitutional,” asserted House senior deputy minority leader and Caloocan Rep. Egay Erice.

The veto, while substantial, leaves a “huge chunk” of the UA, or P150.9 billion, intact, Erice indicated. The petition is expected to seek the removal of the entire UA portion of the budget.

The UA has been used to backstop the insertion of pork barrel into the budget by moving regular items like the vetoed P39 billion earmarked for equity in foreign-assisted projects to the pet projects of legislators, which are a source of kickbacks.

It is presumed that since the amount, which is counterpart financing for official development assistance (ODA) loans that have concessional terms, was vetoed, then it would return to the implementing agencies as programmed funds.

It is unclear whether the pork projects that displaced it were also vetoed or removed, which seems unlikely, given that only P26.5 billion in the programs was taken out against the P92.5 billion in rejected UA.

Erice said tucking the foreign-assisted projects in the UA had delayed some of the flagship projects by four years.

He also expressed bewilderment over the transformation of some members of Congress who once championed transparency, vowing to comb through the budget with a fine-tooth comb during the 2023, 2024, and 2025 deliberations, but now heap praise on the 2026 version, seemingly swayed by the optics of the veto.

The UA is not needed to provide budget flexibility; adaptability should be achieved through supplemental budgets, which the supermajority in the House can advance at any time, provided they include specific financing sources.

Such a mechanism ensures accountability without skirting the law.

Erice said the House opposition and watchdog groups will question the existence of the UA, noting that it has been perverted in the budget since 2023 to open a portal for pork.

Budget manipulation lies at the heart of the massive corruption that has appalled the nation, and it must end.