‘Mahiya naman kayo’: No effect on shameless

On 28 July 2025, President Marcos, in unusually harsh language in his State of the Nation Address, condemned corruption in flood control projects: “Mahiya naman kayo sa inyong kapwa Pilipino (Have some shame before your fellow Filipinos)!”

The statement was directed at lawmakers who had turned flood control projects into a corruption chain of “kickbacks, initiation fees, errata, standard operating procedures,” in short, unrestrained greed.

Yet a little more than a year later, the House’s version of the 2027 national budget, in the words of budget watchdogs, “got even dirtier.”

Last year, under public pressure, the House trumpeted the abolition of the “small committee” that finalized the budget behind closed doors. This year’s budget deliberations, however, showed the reform was carried out with the creation of a “subcommittee on budget amendment review.”

This subcommittee approved P116.3 billion in additional appropriations after a four-hour closed-door meeting — with no objections and no debate. Independent calculations by the People’s Budget Coalition put the actual scale of legislative amendments at P198.9 billion.

What does this figure mean? The House inserted 5,804 new infrastructure projects worth P162 billion into the budget, while deleting 1,068 projects and cutting funding for 206 projects. Where were the funding cuts made? P130 billion came from foreign-assisted projects, including the Japan International Cooperation Agency-funded Metro Manila Subway and other railway projects, and P95 billion came out of the calamity fund.

The watchdogs People’s Budget Coalition and the Roundtable for Inclusive Development pointed out that the House “has once again inserted billions of pesos into programs that perpetuate political patronage.”

The common feature of these programs is that they rely on “referral letters” and “endorsements” rather than universal access based on rights.

Most ironic of all: in 2019, the budget for these “assistance” programs was P42.5 billion; by 2026, it had ballooned to P188.2 billion. From 2020 to 2026, congressional additions beyond the executive’s proposal reached P389 billion. Meanwhile, in 2025, Congress zeroed out PhilHealth’s premium subsidies for poor and elderly members, cut P50 billion from 4Ps, yet increased “assistance” programs by P69.3 billion.

This reveals a systemic substitution: replacing universal rights (such as universal health care) with “favors” that must be obtained through political connections.

Senate Finance Committee Chair JV Ejercito has firmly stated: “We will not simply accept anything the House passes.”

The Senate timetable shows its budget hearings will be completed by 22 October, and the committee report will be submitted by 11 November, with the goal of sending it to the President for his signature before the Christmas recess.

Concrete actions the Senate can take include restoring the P45 billion in preventive health programs that were cut (including immunization and health facility upgrades); reassessing the P130 billion cut to foreign-assisted projects for potential commitment fees and diplomatic consequences; and imposing a ban on infrastructure lump-sum appropriations that lack project lists and “proof of work.”

However, the Senate faces pressure as well.

Ejercito admits: “Being finance committee chair after the flood control scandal is one of the most challenging moments.”

The challenge comes not only from the technical complexity of the budget but also from the institutional pork barrel culture. When what is cut is genuine infrastructure (railways, flood control) and what is added are often hard-to-verify projects like “multipurpose buildings” and “access roads,” the budget process has been turned into a machine for legitimizing political patronage.

The President’s “mahiya naman kayo” still rings in our ears, but the House’s response has been to resort to more sophisticated procedures to continue to do the same thing. Whether the Senate can break this cycle will determine if there is still shame as a moral constraint in Philippine politics. Is there?