With the first-ever open bicameral conference (bicam) set to start on Dec. 13 to reconcile the Senate and House versions of the proposed ₱6.7-trillion national budget for 2026, reform advocates have one distinctive call: for the bicam members to abolish unprogrammed appropriations (UA) in the budget measure that have been the source of “insertions” and kickbacks in the past three years of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration.
It is only one of the demands that reform advocates want to raise with the bicam committee, whose deliberations are being opened for the first time as public anger grows over the plunder of billions of pesos in taxpayer money through flood control and other infrastructure projects.
Former party-list lawmaker Teddy Casiño of the Kilusang Bayan Kontra Kurakot hosted a webinar on Thursday in which ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio spoke on the evolution of the pork barrel system; People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) co-convener Kenneth Abante presented extensive research on significant issues such as the funding of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the government programs including Tupad, AICS, MAIFIP, etc. that are “at high risk of political patronage”; and economics professor Noel Leyco expounded on the corruption scandal’s effects on the economy.
Casiño asked the speakers what civil society organizations (CSO) should demand of the bicam committee as it starts deliberations on Saturday.
The ‘third chamber’
Tinio, who described the bicam committee as the “third chamber” that could even “rewrite the budget,” suggested the CSOs demand the abolition of the UA in the budget measure for good. “Even if [lawmakers] said they removed infrastructure funds from the UA, it remains a blank check, a presidential pork barrel,” he said.
The party-list lawmaker pointed out that the Constitution allows the executive branch to seek additional funding from Congress through supplemental appropriations within the fiscal year. He said this is a “transparent process” in which the National Treasury certifies excess funds from revenue targets to fund supplemental appropriations, and noted that the Constitution never states the use of unprogrammed appropriations.
Both Abante and Leyco backed Tinio’s proposal that the UA be scrapped.
Leyco, of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg), said the executive branch should take full note of the recent Supreme Court ruling ordering the return of the ₱60 billion funds taken from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to fund the UA in the 2024 national budget.
In its ruling, the high court voided the special provision and Department of Finance circular that directed PhilHealth to remit excess funds to the National Treasury, and said the special provision impliedly repealed a Universal Health Care Act provision and the sin tax laws.
Leyco said the government’s interpretation of the high court’s ruling—that the ₱60 billion be taken from the 2026 budget—is wrong because it would be using tax revenues next year to return the PhilHealth funds.
Preserving the pork barrel
Tinio said he believes that the 2024 national budget was “the worst ever budget” because the government allowed PhilHealth and other government corporations to finance pork barrel.
He explained how the pork barrel system evolved in the past administrations.
He said the budget, particularly on infrastructure, increased through the years mainly due to new taxes such as the Expanded Value-Added Tax passed under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; the passage of measures increasing taxes on sugar, alcohol and cigarettes during the late President Benigno Aquino III’s term, and the TRAIN Law passed in the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Tinio said the increased tax revenues provided more funding for the national budget and for infrastructure.
He said the government devised a system to get around the Supreme Court’s ban on pork barrel under the Aquino III administration; made possible the identification of projects for the use of UA for presidential pork barrel under the Macapagal-Arroyo administration; and “unlocked the modes and methods of plundering the infrastructure budget” through the Duterte administration’s “Build, Build, Build” program that saw more money for “potential corruption” for the DPWH.
Tinio said that while commissions and kickbacks were earlier reported to have come from infra projects such as roads, bridges, and multipurpose halls, under the Duterte administration, the kickbacks came from rock-netting and flood control projects. The number of flood control projects increased in 2019. He noted “innovations” in the budget deliberations where, to increase pork barrel, the budgets of government departments and agencies were reduced and then transferred to unprogrammed appropriations.
“This is where the UA ballooned,” he said.
Tinio said the contribution of the Marcos Jr. administration to the pork barrel system is to “hyperscale” insertions in the budget in the last three years.
He said that from testimonies of whistleblowers in the Senate blue ribbon committee, this is also the period where “important players” emerged—proponents, megacontractors, and bureaucratic enablers—who created an “efficient ecosystem extracting kickbacks from the big infrastructure budget.”
Are the ‘allocables’ gone?
Tinio expressed wariness of the proposed 2026 national budget despite assurances from both the Palace and lawmakers that deliberations would be transparent and free of pork barrel insertions.
“Are the ‘allocables’ gone?” he said, using the new term for pork barrel. “They’re still there, even if it is said to be a reformed budget. You can be assured that these are preserved, that the pork barrel system is intact.”
One indication, he said, is the proposed budget for the DPWH, in which congresspersons supposedly did not agree with the numbers in the National Executive Program, the budget prepared by the President, and had it sent back to the Department of Budget and Management for resubmission.
Tinio dismissed this as “drama” to ensure that the “allocables” are inserted, and claimed that Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon was “complicit.”
The party-list lawmaker also underscored the importance of knowing the individual amendments that the senators made in the proposed budget, as these are not on public record. “The challenge for us is to expose this all during the bicam,” he said.
Abante, for his part, said that “at the very least,” Congress should give the PBC and other reform advocates some time—“one to two days”—to analyze the reconciled Senate and House versions in the bicam before Congress ratifies the measure. He said a “committee of volunteers” is willing to do it.
Leyco called on lawmakers to allow CSOs and other groups “basic participation” in the bicam and to be provided copies of the documents at the same time as the bicam members.
Both Leyco and Abante said that while the House included them in the budget deliberations, they did not participate and merely received copies of the proposals.
“There was no real consultation,” Leyco said. “The group was placed in a room, and we were not allowed to speak. It was not meaningful, and we were just made into symbolic compliance.”
According to Abante, the group had a “little better” experience at the Senate.
Critical level
Leyco also warned the government that the flood control corruption scandal has put the Philippine economy “at a critical level.”
He said global investment analysts had likened the economy to the pandemic level of 2020. Among the “data and indicators,” he said, are the high unemployment and underemployment rates released by the Philippine Statistics Authority this week, as well as the slowdown in consumer spending reported by the Asian Development Bank.
Leyco said the government, too, had stalled in its spending, as some officials did not want to sign documents for fear of being investigated.
“The government has not declared that the situation now is at a critical level. We are no longer in a pandemic situation, but it seems we are still in one,” Leyco said. “People and investors have no confidence in the government, and if this is not acted upon in the shortest time, this will become a serious crisis.”
