Cure infested HGAB

Even a House member who voted against the proposed P7.2-trillion House General Appropriations Bill (HGAB) for 2027 is now pinning his hopes on the Senate after what he described as the House’s questionable budget process.

The Senate Committee on Finance will deliberate on the measure, which Caloocan Rep. Egay Erice criticized as turning a plan to meet public needs into a tool for rewarding allies and punishing opponents. The House approved the HGAB, 281-13, with one abstention.

Senator JV Ejercito, who chairs the Senate Finance panel, has vowed to impose safeguards against “last-minute insertions” and scrutinize questionable allocations, particularly in light of the flood control scandal.

In his initial review of the HGAB, the senator said the House adjusted P206 billion in the National Expenditure Program (NEP). He added the Senate will not rubber-stamp the bill and will review it line by line to prevent irregularities.

Erice rejected the GAB, saying it represented a return to the abuses of the past that led to the Floodgate scandal, albeit on a smaller scale.

District allocations in the GAB followed political influence, relatives and party loyalty instead of need, so those who voted for impeachment, particularly the prosecutors, saw their districts’ budgets rise by billions of pesos while other House members’ small allocations were trimmed.

NEP projects were removed by the small committee and replaced with items nobody could trace. Although he described the practice as a smaller version of the old pork barrel because the amounts now run in the hundreds of millions where they once ran in the hundreds of billions, he still regards it as an anomaly, since the fiscal room for development has narrowed.

Under the proposed spending plan, nearly P3 trillion goes to running the government, almost P2 trillion to salaries and personal services, and more than P1.1 trillion to interest on past loans.

That leaves about P1.13 trillion for new projects, hardly more than the interest bill itself.

The House keeps billions in operating funds whose division only the leadership knows, and those savings no longer return to the National Treasury, so the pile grows each year without anyone outside the leadership knowing how it is used.

He proposed that the Senate panel itemize so-called savings and list every district allocation.

While money flows to favored districts, funding was slashed for proven programs.

The Senate panel removed a school building program even though the country lacks about 165,000 classrooms; it halved a feeding program for malnourished pupils in public elementary schools; it left a P1 billion fund that paid private hospitals to treat poor emergency patients with nothing; and it trimmed agriculture projects meant to raise productivity.

Congressional leaders reallocated the funds to projects of their choosing.

The Local Government Support Fund (LGSF), which grew from P27 billion in 2025 to P57 billion in 2026, now stands at P62 billion.

It is a blank check because the president alone decides when, how much and to whom to give it. Poor areas such as Batanes and Maguindanao received nothing, while large cities such as Manila, Quezon City and Naga got the biggest shares.

The fund is nothing but a presidential pork barrel that violates Article 6 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power of appropriation. Although the Supreme Court questioned the fund under President Aquino, it let it stand because the sum was small, about P400 million, and the projects were named.

The revenue estimates were inflated as they assumed P5.2 trillion in collections and P1.69 trillion in new borrowing based on growth above 5 percent, even though the economy grew 2.6 percent in the first quarter, shrank 2.3 percent in the second and barely reached 2 percent in the third, by experts’ estimates.

Weak tax collection, along with promised tax relief for incomes between P250,000 and P350,000, the proposed removal of the travel tax and the push to end value-added tax on power system losses, would further reduce revenue, meaning the government would have to borrow more.

With debt already at P19.6 trillion and about P1.6 trillion in principal due next year, plus new borrowing, the government must raise roughly P3.3 trillion for debt servicing. The government’s obligations will rise to P22 trillion or P23 trillion by the end of 2027. The LGSF must be reduced and the money shifted to tested programs.

Clearly, the HGAB seeks an election budget, and the Senate panel led by Ejercito seems determined to frustrate it.