Scandals stitched together
The Bicameral Conference Committee amended the budget bill and left blanks in its report, thereby offering what amounted to a blank check for pork barrel projects.
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The Bicameral Conference Committee amended the budget bill and left blanks in its report, thereby offering what amounted to a blank check for pork barrel projects.
The Supreme Court en banc’s move to consolidate the various complaints against the perversion of the national budget does not bode well for the architects of the Marcos administration’s maneuvers.
The consolidation signaled that the High Tribunal had taken cognizance of the petitions and would likely issue a ruling as consequential as its past landmark decisions — voiding the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) pork barrel scheme in 2013, and striking down portions of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as unconstitutional in 2014.
Health advocate Dr. Tony Leachon’s petition on PhilHealth’s zero subsidy was consolidated with the pleas attacking the blank line items in the bicameral report on Republic Act 12116, the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), already notorious as the most corrupt budget in the nation’s history.
Thus, the court is stitching together the petitions of former Executive Secretary Victor Rodriguez and Davao Representative Isidro Ungab for certiorari and prohibition, asking the Court to declare the 2025 GAA unconstitutional, citing the blank items in the Bicameral Conference Committee report on the budget bill.
The complaint flagged unfilled entries in the budgets of the National Irrigation Administration, the Philippine Coconut Authority, and the Department of Agriculture, involving mainly the favorite items for kickbacks like farm-to-market roads and irrigation works.
The legislators who drafted the notorious budget law invoked the excuse of typographical errors, which could be covered by a provision allowing the appropriations committee to “correct and fill” the mistakes after ratification.
The petitioners called it manipulation, arguing that the Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam) amended the budget bill and left blanks in its report, thereby offering what amounted to a blank check for pork barrel projects.
Thus, the Bicam exceeded its mandate of reconciling the House and Senate versions of the budget bill.
Leachon’s petition runs on a parallel track. He told the Court that the GAA’s zero allocation for the state health insurer, the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), violated provisions of the Constitution and the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act.
The 2025 GAA failed to allocate a single centavo to the agency, crippling its capacity to serve its members, the health advocate said in his petition.
The defunding was justified by Congress on the claim, mainly by the then Senate Bicam heads Senators Chiz Escudero and Grace Poe, that PhilHealth was sitting on excess reserves, money that could be better spent elsewhere.
The Court showed skepticism toward that theory since, in December, it ordered P60 billion in previously diverted PhilHealth reserves to be returned, ruling that the prior fund-transfer mechanism was an unconstitutional rider that impliedly repealed the reserve provisions of the UHC Act.
The SC, however, had yet to resolve the zero-subsidy question for 2025 as it merely established that Congress cannot raid PhilHealth’s reserves through an appropriations law sleight of hand.
Leachon’s petition pushed the argument further, since the SC said that PhilHealth’s reserves cannot be diverted through a rider in the law, and that mandated support for its budget cannot be redirected.
Blanks in the budget report and a zero in a subsidy line are the same dog wearing different collars since they were products of Bicam manipulations.
Consolidation means the magistrates will, in detail, address questions about the abuse of discretion that resulted in a bastardized budget to serve as a guideline for the next budget law.
The SC recognition is pivotal in light of the views expressed by the magistrates during the oral arguments over the equally notorious pork conduit and the Unprogrammed Appropriations.
The erudite members of the bar mostly expressed opposition to lump sums and the need to have every peso appropriated by the State to be traced to an author, an amount and an accountable hand.
The people’s money is sacred and can’t be bundled and stuffed inside rows of suitcases to fatten the crooks in government.
