What happens to the 2025 budget if challenged in the Supreme Court?
MANILA, Philippines — The 2025 budget has had no shortage of controversies, from its deliberation in Congress to its delayed signing by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and now discussions about raising the budget to the Supreme Court (SC) have begun to circulate.
Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, who alleged that there were blank spaces in the bicam report, said in an Inquirer report that there are groups who will raise the 2025 national budget to the SC.
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, a former SC chief justice, said that the high court is unlikely to stop the budget from operating.
“The Supreme Court will never stop the budget from being implemented, all right? I cannot understand if the Supreme Court will have that tendency to put a stop to it even if any of those challengers will ask for a TRO (temporary restraining order) because the government [must] function, must be ran,” Bersamin said in a media briefing on Friday, January 24, in Pasay City.
A TRO is meant to prevent an individual or a party from taking a certain action.
Bersamin said that if prospective petitioners seek a TRO against the budget, the country could always fall back on a reenacted budget— the one from the previous year.
“But the reenacted budget can come only when there is a finding that it has been vetoed or the Supreme Court has nullified the present budget,” Bersamin said.
There have been instances where the government was forced to operate on a reenacted budget, such as when Congress and the executive branch fail to pass the yearly budget on time. This was the case with former President Rodrigo Duterte, who did not sign the 2019 budget until well into April of that year, citing alleged insertions of pork.
Presidents are typically expected to sign the budget for the following year in December.
“There is a duly approved budget subject to all those that were vetoed, the items. As we have been clearly telling, the effect of the veto is only to reduce the deficit because that is all that the veto has as a consequence. The realignments will happen only later on in the spending process,” the executive secretary said.
Bersamin said that if Ungab wished to raise the matter to the SC, the Palace could not stop him.
However, he maintained that it is not the executive branch that will answer for it.
The Palace distanced itself from the controversial bicam report raised by Ungab, stating that it only received the report in its complete form as the General Appropriations Bill (GAB).
He added that the bicam report is internal to Congress.
“Ang problema natin diyan is, hindi kami ang mananagot diyan kung mayroon mang pagkukulang sa bagay na iyan dahil bicam report iyan eh. Wala kaming kinalaman sa bicam report. Ang may kinalaman lang kami iyong finished product na pinapirmahan sa presidente, hindi iyong blank check,” Bersamin said in the same panel as the country’s economic managers.
(The problem here is, we will not be the one to answer for that. We had nothing to do with the bicam report. We only had something to do with the finished product of the president, not the black check.)
Bersamin went on to slam the reported fake news by Ungab, which was further amplified by Duterte.
“Alisin natin sa consciousness ninyo na kami ay may kinalaman sa mga blank pages na sinasabi ninyo,” Bersamin said.
(Remove in your consciousness that we had anything to do with the blank pages that you are saying.)
Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman explained in the same briefing that the bicam report is the reconciled version of the House of Representatives and the Senate’s approved budgets.
After its ratification, the bicam report is turned over to a technical working staff, where it is rewritten and cleaned up before becoming the bill that will be enrolled.
“Iyong enrolled version po, iyon po ang pinapasa sa Office of the President na pirmado po ng speaker of the House at saka iyong officer po niya, Senate at saka iyong Sec-Gens [secretary generals] po nila. So, iyon po ang makakarating sa Office of the President. So, iyong sinasabi po nila na blangko, sila din lang po ang makakapagpuno noong blangko,” she said.
(The enrolled version, this is what is passed to the Office of the President that is signed by the Speaker of the House and his officers, the Senate and their secretary generals. So that is what reaches the Office of the President. That is what they are saying that is blank, and they are the only ones who can fill that blank.)
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