Vanishing holy grail
Either the paperwork behind a P450-billion swing in the budget never existed or it exists and Congress has been withholding it from the Court reviewing its constitutionality.
Daily TribuneEither the paperwork behind a P450-billion swing in the budget never existed or it exists and Congress has been withholding it from the Court reviewing its constitutionality.
Even the conclusion of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments on the petitions challenging three straight national budgets from 2024 ended in frustration over securing documents that are well-guarded in the vaults of the House of Representatives.
Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa had asked, at an earlier hearing, for the paper trail behind the Bicameral Conference Committee’s (Bicam) decision to raise 2024 Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) from P281.9 billion in the National Expenditure Program to P731.4 billion in the enacted General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Caguioa sought from Solicitor General Darlene Berberabe the worksheets, spreadsheets and background calculations. He wanted to know, program by program, what was inserted, what was cut, what moved from programmed to unprogrammed status, and why.
The Office of the Solicitor General came back empty-handed. It had the Bicam report. It had a joint explanation of differences from the House and the Senate. That was all. Congress’s own rules, counsel explained, required only those two documents. Nothing more exists, or so Congress told the lawyers who told the Court.
Caguioa was not satisfied with second-hand assurances. He ordered the House and the Senate to file sworn compliance — under oath — stating plainly whether the requested records existed.
If they don’t exist, Congress must say so under oath. If they exist but Congress won’t hand them over, Congress must say so too, under oath.
“I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” he said. Not from counsel relaying a conversation with the leadership. From Congress itself, on the record, with the weight of perjury behind it.
Either the paperwork behind a P450-billion swing in the budget never existed or it exists, and Congress has been withholding it from the Court reviewing its constitutionality.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) did not fare much better. Its own comparisons run at the agency and sectoral levels, not per program, activity, and project.
Caguioa instructed the DBM to produce the granular version anyway, a full NEP-to-GAA comparison identifying every increase, reduction, insertion, defunding and transfer. The DBM asked for 30 days. It got 15.
A second, quieter line of questioning went to the structural heart of the case. Article VI, Section 24 gives the House exclusive power to originate appropriations bills; the Senate may only propose or concur with amendments.
The question is whether, if the increase occurred in the Bicam that includes a Senate component, the constitutional origination requirement was violated.
There was also an attempt to shift responsibility for improperly certified “urgent” bills since only the President can certify urgency, and only a specified calamity or emergency can justify it.
Using the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. as precedent, the Court, after finding an unconstitutional fund diversion, ordered the excess to be returned through subsequent appropriations rather than unwinding the original act.
If Congress certifies under oath that granular Bicam worksheets don’t exist, that becomes its own story — a budget process that produced a P450-billion swing with no documented basis, defended after the fact by a report and an explanation of differences that were never meant to substitute for the underlying math.
If the documents do exist and surface only under judicial compulsion, it will be an indictment of the congressional leadership’s opacity.