Palace, House of Horrors

The Supreme Court (SC) has declared portions of the 2024 and 2025 General Appropriations Acts (GAA) unconstitutional and struck down provisions governing the Unprogrammed Allocations (UA) in the 2026 budget.

The SC ruling calls for the government to pursue and penalize those responsible for the alleged misuse of public funds through the UA. Yet no such effort appears to be forthcoming. Instead, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has directed the Solicitor General to challenge the High Court’s decision.

The questions remain: How much money flowed through the UA, and where did it go? Budget watchdogs say no formal inquiry has been conducted, including into how much money the National Treasury swept into the fund.

No one has tallied what the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) released to government agencies in 2024 and 2025. The figures for 2022 and 2023 have never been made public.

Private sector fiscal experts released an analysis of the 2024 and 2025 national budgets, and the numbers are horrifying.

To funnel money into discretionary funds for the UA, there needed to be a semblance of excess money that the government, which had accumulated huge fiscal deficits under Marcos Jr., simply did not have.

To create the phantom extra money, a provision was inserted in the 2024 budget directing the Department of Finance to sweep up the reserves of government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs), a rider that the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional in its decision on Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) funds.

The use of the UA was conceptualized and pushed in late 2023 through a standalone bill to amend the 2023 GAA that laid the groundwork for the modus operandi.

Instead of sweeping the GOCCs, the modern incarnation of the “pork barrel” in the 2023 budget was engineered through a practice known as “budget parking.”

This was done by “parking” funds in an agency or account that did not need them or was not intended to spend them for the stated purpose, shielding the money from lapsing or reversion so it could later be used for something else as savings.

The Treasury certified P499 billion as available for the UA in 2024 and 2025. This included cash swept from PhilHealth, the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. and other government corporations under the unconstitutional Special Provision 1(d) of the 2024 UA.

Reports from the Office of the Solicitor General and the DBM to the Supreme Court showed that the huge amount went to agencies through Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs). Almost nothing was left over.

The biggest recipient was the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). It received P195 billion on top of its regular budget under the programmed appropriations. Of the amount, P107 billion went to flood control, while P30 billion went to roads, which have been proven to be prime sources of kickbacks.

Another P11 billion went to multipurpose halls and covered courts, in the exact same amounts, while P45 billion went to other infrastructure.

One SARO to the DPWH was for P70 billion, covering P40 billion for flood control, P26 billion for roads and P4 billion for buildings. It was released on 14 November 2024, months before the 2025 election ban.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)received another P29 billion for its cash aid program. The department already had funds for Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations and the Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita Program in its regular budget.

The Department of Health (DoH) received P10 billion for its Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP) program.

The MAIFIP also had a huge allocation in the regular budget. Both amounts came at PhilHealth’s expense. PhilHealth lost P60 billion in the cash sweep while its subsidy was zeroed out in 2024.

To add it up, P195 billion for the DPWH, P29 billion for the DSWD and P10 billion for the DoH make P234 billion. That is 47 percent of releases under the 2024 and 2025 UAs.

Adding money to programs that were already funded gave legislators more hard pork and soft pork ahead of the 2025 elections, showing the Marcos administration’s budget priorities year after year instead of funding programs under the medium-term development plan.

Marcos is now asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling, invoking judicial overreach in an argument that is difficult to accept. The Legislature and the Executive abused their discretion, not the Court that checked them.

The message behind Marcos’ challenge to the SC decision is unmistakable: Congress may mangle the President’s proposed budget to accommodate the pork barrel, while the Executive may dip into the UA as it pleases. Neither branch, it seems, should be held to account — not even by the Supreme Court.

This is blatant impunity dressed up as a defense of the separation of powers, an attempt to reject accountability by branding judicial oversight as overreach.