With the start of 2025, President Marcos has been issuing orders to restore funding for various programs and projects that were cut by Congress and realigned to their new pork barrel, the unprogrammed appropriations, plus the ayuda programs that they will use for their election campaigns.
Earlier this month, the budget call was issued to all agencies in the executive branch. Drawing up funding proposals for fiscal year 2026 will take several months of consultations and deliberations within the agencies, for submission to the Department of Budget and Management. The DBM, together with certain agencies, will review the proposals in drawing up the National Expenditure Program.
The NEP gets a final scrutiny at the Office of the President before submission to Congress, usually coinciding with the joint opening of the two chambers, for deliberations on the annual General Appropriations Bill. The GAB deliberations, during which the executive agencies explain their funding proposals, typically take several months, with the budget hearings open to the public.
In all, it takes nearly an entire year to finalize the proposed national budget. So it’s scandalous that the NEP can be mangled virtually in the blink of an eye, behind closed doors, by the bicameral conference, whose members (apart from the chairs of the committees on appropriations and finance) no one wants to identify.
All the painstaking effort, time and operating funds that went into the preparation of those budget proposals by the executive agencies vanish in one fell swoop, as the bicam carries out operation dagdag-bawas or padding and shaving on the GAB.
Fortunately for the nation, the budget deliberations have come under minute scrutiny, including by those familiar with the budget process as well as those who know the law enough to challenge the legality and constitutionality of certain provisions inserted by the bicam at the eleventh hour into the 2025 General Appropriations Act.
The President, in an effort to prevent a reenactment of the budget, which usually opens opportunities for corruption, vetoed certain items in the 2025 outlay, but signed it into law anyway before yearend.
Today he is scrounging around for funding sources to restore what Congress had cut, including P12 billion for the Department of Education and allocations for the information technology systems and other needs of the Philippine National Police. He will have to deal with public dissatisfaction over health care coverage, as his opponents highlight the zero subsidy this year for the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., whose “savings” were impounded in 2024 for the congressional pork barrel.
The abuse of the legislative power of the purse, particularly by the bicameral conference, cannot be allowed to persist. The executive must work with the legislature to prevent a repeat of this abuse.