Senators vow tighter 2027 budget safeguards after SC ruling

Senators vowed Wednesday to enforce stricter safeguards in the ongoing budget process for the proposed P7.2 trillion spending outlay for 2027, ensuring no room for questionable alterations after the Supreme Court declared the 2024 and 2025 budgets “unconstitutional.”

The commitment comes as the Senate scrutinizes the 2027 General Appropriations Bill passed by the House of Representatives, which allegedly realigned P206 billion from the National Expenditure Program (NEP), the President’s version of the budget.

The SC recently declared the 2024 and 2025 budgets “severely distorted” because Congress increased unprogrammed appropriations (UA) by P449.5 billion and the Special Road Fund by P17.99 billion, effectively inflating the President’s recommended spending plan.

Senate finance committee chair JV Ejercito vowed to abide by the SC decision and pledged, “What transpired in past budget deliberations will not happen under my watch in the proposed 2027 national budget.”

Ejercito said they will carefully examine the court’s ruling on the UA provisions, particularly its implications for preparing, approving, and implementing the 2027 budget, which is set to be cleared at the committee level this week.

Senate President Pro Tempore Tito Sotto also warned that budget alterations will be strictly prohibited at the Senate level under Ejercito’s watch.

He stressed that the ongoing budget process will remain open to public scrutiny by adopting transparency measures such as livestreaming the bicameral conference committee to ensure greater visibility of how public funds are allocated.

“If you recall, we made the process transparent, and we disallowed everything that was deemed impermissible...Now, for the 2027 budget, even though I am currently serving as Pro-Tempore, we will ensure that it follows the same framework we established for the 2026 budget: it will be live-streamed, clean, clear, and the public will know exactly where the funds are going,” he told reporters.

However, despite the so-called transparency measures implemented last year, the SC still struck down UA provisions in the 2026 budget, particularly Special Provisions 1(a) and (b) of Chapter XLIII.

The high tribunal “permanently prohibited” both chambers of Congress, the Office of the Executive Secretary, and the Department of Budget and Management from implementing the provisions in the 2026 GAA because they were “overly broad, lacked prioritization standards, and partly functioned as prohibited lump sum appropriations.”

Senator Ping Lacson acknowledged that the SC ruling highlighted how Congress could abuse its sole power to alter the NEP.

“The 2024 and 2025 GAAs will go down in history as the worst budgets ever passed by Congress after the Disbursement Acceleration Program under the 2013 GAA was also declared unconstitutional by the SC,” he lamented.

Sotto and Lacson were not part of the Senate when the 19th Congress passed the 2024 and 2025 GAAs, while Ejercito was a member of the Senate contingent in the bicam that approved the final versions of the two budget bills before submitting them for the President’s approval.

Ejercito flagged massive cuts to foreign-assisted projects, flagship railways, and preventive health programs in the 2027 GAB passed by the House, while pointing out surges in the budgets for flood control and medical assistance funds.

Lacson, meanwhile, questioned the “uniform" P180-million lump-sum allocation for the establishment of evacuation centers across 17 regions, with a staggering combined total of over P3 billion, purportedly lacking crucial details.

Lacson said the Senate may restore “hundreds of billions” of pesos in cuts and realignments by the House, including changes to funds for foreign-assisted projects (FAPs) and additional funding for flood control projects.

Budget watchdogs have derided the UA as “shadow pork” and a “conduit for corruption,” since lump-sum allocations are allegedly most prominent there.

A lump sum is a pool of funds allocated to a program or group of projects without specific, detailed line-item breakdowns, giving lawmakers and agencies too much discretion over how they spend public funds after the budget passes.

The UA is standby funds that can only be tapped when the government collects more revenue than expected, or when grants and foreign funds are available. Typically, the UA is tapped for emergencies or when infrastructure projects, social aid programs, and other needs arise.

Later reports revealed that the government used the UA to fund fraudulent flood-control projects and other infrastructure programs vulnerable to corruption.

UA north-south commuter railway. Press Tab to insert.