After taking direct fire from a public outraged by the manipulation of the national budget, Congress agreed to livestream Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam) proceedings for the 2026 spending plan rather than conduct the usual closed-door bargaining over pork allocations.

The so-called open Bicam for the 2026 national budget was a welcome first. But transparency did not necessarily produce integrity, and what unfolded was a familiar story wearing slightly newer clothes.

Previous bicameral budget conferences were held behind closed doors, often fueling suspicions of anomalous insertions in the final budget draft.

The 2026 cycle attempted to address this by livestreaming proceedings, but key decisions were still made off-camera and in executive sessions, undermining the spirit of transparency.

Even after the open Bicam review, lawmakers retained P243 billion in Unprogrammed Appropriations despite public scrutiny over how such funds had been used previously to bankroll 3,700 infrastructure projects worth P214.4 billion in 2023 and 2024.

Strikingly, the Bicam version increased the amount beyond what either the House or Senate had separately proposed.

To its credit, the Bicam removed allocations for certain flood-control projects long criticized as pork-barrel vehicles. But the money appeared to flow elsewhere.

Hard pork in the form of infrastructure spending remained alive despite assurances that discretionary allocations were being stripped away.

Some House lawmakers pushed to increase the Department of Public Works and Highways budget by P45 billion, arguing that around 10,000 projects would otherwise become impossible to implement.

Cabinet officials also appeared during the second day of the Bicam proceedings, an unusual development since executive officials are generally not expected to participate at that stage.

The appearance strongly suggested lobbying efforts to preserve district-level projects that could lose funding under the Senate’s leaner version of the budget.

Meanwhile, funding for farm-to-market roads doubled from P16 billion to P33 billion.

Budget experts also flagged the sharp increase in so-called soft pork or ayuda programs.

The Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients program rose from P24 billion to P51 billion, while the Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita Program jumped from P27 billion to P64 billion.

Aid programs are not inherently problematic. But history has shown that when their budgets suddenly balloon, they often become tools for political patronage rather than purely social welfare.

The open Bicam remains a genuine step forward. Sunlight is always preferable to secrecy. But the livestreams also showed that pork-barrel politics no longer requires darkness to operate.

It now functions comfortably in plain sight.

The answer, therefore, is not merely openness but sustained public vigilance — monitoring the Bicam process from beginning to end, identifying lawmakers who treat the national budget as a personal patronage fund, and ensuring that open Bicam sessions become permanent rather than symbolic reforms.

The deeper problem remains a budget system still vulnerable to political distortion despite the appearance of transparency.