MANILA, Philippines — The Supreme Court (SC) has asked Congress and Malacañang to comment on the petition claiming unconstitutional irregularities in the enactment of the 2025 national budget, including the supposed blank items in the bicameral conference committee report of the spending plan.
The SC gave the respondents, the House of Representatives, Senate and Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, 10 days to comment on the petition for certiorari and prohibition filed by former executive secretary Vic Rodriguez and Davao City 3rd District Rep. Isidro Ungab, among others.
According to the petitioners, the legislative and executive branches violated Article VI, Section 27 of the Constitution, which mandates that no public funds can be allocated without an appropriation made by law, when the bicameral panel submitted a report with blank items.
The bicameral report is the reconciled version of the House and Senate’s respective budget bills, which becomes the general appropriations bill that turns into the General Appropriations Act (GAA) once signed by President Marcos.
The petitioners claimed members of the bicameral conference committee left blanks in its report pertaining to budget allocations for the National Irrigation Administration, Department of Agriculture and the Philippine Coconut Authority.
These blanks, they said, are “very dubious and dangerous as the budgets for the said offices and programs remain to be undetermined.”
The petitioners said that while the bicam panel has the power to reconcile conflicting provisions in the Senate and the House versions of the 2025 general appropriations bill, “it is prohibited from amending provisions without clearly stating the version to which it should be amended to. Such irregularity is a blatant violation of the Constitution which should not be condoned.”
The identified items, however, all had appropriated amounts under the 2025 GAA signed by Marcos, a copy of which is available on the Department of Budget and Management website.
The petitioners also claimed the 2025 budget law violated Article XIV, Section 5(5) of the 1987 Constitution for not giving the education sector the highest budget allocation, as the GAA only “gave the impression” that the education sector got the lion’s share of the budget, but the figures were “merely bloated” by the inclusion of non-education-related agencies.
They cited how the Philippine Military Academy, the Philippine National Police Academy and the National Defense College of the Philippines, which were under the Department of National Defense and were historically categorized under the defense sector, “were lumped with appropriations for the education sector.”
The petitioners also noted that the Local Government Academy, the Philippine Public Safety College, the Philippine Science High School System and the Science Education Institute, which were previously classified in other non-education sectors, were now included in the education budget.
They also noted budget re-alignments, which supposedly increased the proposed budget appropriations for Congress and other line agencies, in violation of Article VI, Section 25(1) of the Constitution, as it exceeded the amounts recommended by the President in the National Expenditure Program.
From the proposed budget of P16.35 billion for the House of Representatives, they said the budget ballooned to P33.67 billion when the bill was passed into law. For the Senate, there was a “more modest” increase from P12.83 billion to P13.93 billion.
The petitioners also claimed “not a single centavo” was appropriated for the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), justified by the estimated P600-billion reserve funds of the state insurer.