EDITORIAL - Fill in the blanks?

Here’s another reason to make proceedings in the bicameral conference transparent.

Instead of backpedaling on their story that there were blank items in the 2025 national budget, those behind the report have doubled down on their claim.

It remains unclear if documents that have been made public were circulated for lawmakers’ signature after the bicameral conference committee had finished mangling the budget proposal of the executive, or if it is the General Appropriations Act that President Marcos signed into law before 2024 drew to a close.

President Marcos has said the GAA that he signed did not contain blank items, which would have rendered the measure invalid. Senate President Francis Escudero dismissed as baseless the story about the blank items, which was first raised by Davao City 3rd District Rep. Isidro Ungab and amplified by former president Rodrigo Duterte. In a podcast, Duterte and Ungab said that at least 13 pages of the GAA have items with blank appropriations, likening this to a “blank check” scheme.

Marcos said Duterte was “lying.” Certain members of the House of Representatives described the story as fake news. The Department of Budget and Management, which slammed the “malicious and irresponsible allegations,” said that what “certain misinformed individuals” presented were pages from the bicam report and not the General Appropriations Bill or the GAA that Marcos signed.

But the story continues to gain traction, with former senator Panfilo Lacson seeing similarities with the anomalous entries that he and then Senate president Tito Sotto found in the printed enrolled bill that were not in the ratified bicam report on the 2019 GAA. Then president Duterte vetoed P95.3 billion in the GAA because of the issue.

Lacson is calling for a side-by-side comparison of the enrolled budget bill, the final version sent to Marcos for signing and the ratified bicam report, to determine where the blank items showed up, and who filled in the blanks.

It would be easier to dismiss such accusations if there is transparency throughout the budget process, particularly during the bicameral conference. The public, however, is hard-pressed to even find out who the members of the bicam are. This latest controversy should give urgency to the lifting of the opaqueness at the bicam and the congressional budget process in general.