Senator Imee R. Marcos on Sunday brushed off remarks by Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson about her alleged budget “wishlist,” insisting the projects cited were never funded and remained mere proposals submitted to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

In a message to reporters, Marcos described Lacson’s comments as “somewhat laughable,” stressing that the supposed wishlist had been classified as for later release (FLR) and that no funds were ever disbursed.

“He’s quite funny. He doesn’t seem to know that all of those were just a wishlist submitted to the DPWH Central Office,” Marcos said in Filipino.

“Is he clueless that all of us in the opposition were tagged FLR or ‘for later release’? None of those were released — zero for all of us, including Senators Bong Go, Bato [dela Rosa], and Robin [Padilla]),” she added.

Marcos also rejected any implication that she had influence over which projects were funded by the administration.

“I have no idea about the administration’s allocables,” she said. “Between the two of us, I am not Malacañang’s lawyer.”

Marcos suggested that Lacson’s criticism had turned unusually personal, joking that he seemed particularly fired up over the issue.

“Senator Ping seems too fired up against me — he might even want to pull my hair,” she quipped. “I’m sure I’d lose that fight.”

Lacson earlier flagged P2.5 billion worth of “allocables” linked to Marcos in the 2025 National Expenditure Program (NEP), questioning her criticism of alleged pork barrel items in the proposed 2026 national budget and her silence during bicameral conference deliberations.

He said documents he received from the camp of the late DPWH Undersecretary Catalina Cabral showed that Marcos had allocables amounting to P2.5 billion in the 2025 NEP.