House Speaker Martin Romualdez handing out “ayuda” or cash aid to the poor in a Quezon City mall not only seemed odd but also violated the Supreme Court’s ruling on the “pork barrel,” according to former budget secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad. 

Politicians have been enjoying greater leeway in selecting beneficiaries and determining amounts of aid due to the massive realignments in the national budget under the Marcos administration, Abad said in a forum at the Ateneo de Manila University last Monday, Jan. 13.

He observed that from 2023 to 2025, Congress diverted a total of P1 trillion from the President’s budget, or the National Expenditure Program (NEP), showing a shift in priorities from social services to cash assistance doles. 

Congress slashed P219 billion from NEP projects in the 2023 national budget, P449.5 billion in the 2024 budget, and P373 billion in this year’s budget, or a total of P1.041 trillion, Abad said in a PowerPoint presentation. 

President Marcos Jr. vetoed P194 billion worth of projects from the P6.326-trillion 2025 national budget. However, Abad noted, only P26 billion of the vetoed items had funding and the remaining P168 billion had “unprogrammed appropriations,” meaning they had no source of funding yet and were thus “inconsequential.” 

“Where is the P1 trillion of pork and patronage funds?” Abad said at the forum, “Patronage politics: The hidden hand behind the 2025 budget,” that was held at the Ateneo School of Governance and aired live over Zoom. 

“What is the status of the utilization of more than a trillion pesos of public funds taken from the first three national expenditure programs of the current administration?” added Abad, who was budget chief during the administration of President Benigno Aquino III.

Historically, the NEP is approved by Congress without major changes, except during the 1990s financial crisis, the budget reenactments from 2001 to 2010 under President Gloria Arroyo’s administration, and the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022, according to Abad.\

The NEP is the budget prepared by Malacañang and submitted to Congress. Like any regular bill, it goes through the legislative mill and takes the final form of the General Appropriations Bill once approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

Scrutiny and criticism 

The 2025 national budget has been roundly criticized for the bloated budgets of the House (P33.67 billion from the proposed P16.3 billion) and the Senate (P13.93 billion from P12.83 billion).

Much scrutiny has been devoted to its huge allocation for doles to the poor—P44.74 billion for the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS), P41.16 billion for the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIP), P26.15 billion for the Ayuda Para sa Kapos Ang Kita Program (Akap), and P18.289 billion for the Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/ Displaced Workers Program (Tupad).

The Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) single highest allocation of P1.034 trillion, which surpasses the Department of Education’s (DepEd) P737 billion, has also worried teachers and the private sector. The education sector is constitutionally mandated to receive the highest annual appropriation.

“When I was looking at the 2025 budget, I was surprised. There were huge cuts, not the usual cuts,” Abad said at the forum. He described the cuts in this year’s national outlay as well as in the 2024 and 2023 budgets “unprecedented.”

He wondered if, 2025 being an election year, the national budget would show similar realignments in 2028, when the next presidential election will take place.

Abad observed that the cuts and realignments in the administration’s first three budgets showed a shift from programs for empowerment, self-reliance and community engagement—such as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)—to cash doles such as Akap, AICS, MAIP and Tupad. 

Seizing budgets from social service agencies to fund cash doles and letting politicians distribute them “deepen the culture of patronage, the very conditions that perpetuate poverty and political dynasties,” he said. 

High court’s ruling

Later commenting on a video of Speaker Romualdez distributing “ayuda” to Akap beneficiaries at a Quezon City mall last November, Abad said this violated the Supreme Court’s ruling on the lawmakers’ priority development assistance fund (PDAF), or pork barrel.

This, he said, smacked of legislators intervening in the execution of the national budget, an act that the high court cited as unconstitutional when it ruled on the PDAF. 

Abad said the cuts and realignments also showed a departure from transport, infrastructure, and agri-based investments toward “graft-prone” projects such as flood control and drainage systems, and hyper-micro local projects like roads, bridges, and multipurpose halls.

In the end, these undermine the role of the executive branch in setting development priorities, and weaken the check and balance system in a democracy, he said.

Abad said the DPWH’s budget surpassing the DepEd’s allotment in the 2025 budget raises legal questions, as does the reduction to zero of the proposed P74.4-billion subsidy from “sin taxes” to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

“How can flood control projects be more important than addressing the 160,000-classroom backlog and the dilapidated condition of 70% of existing classrooms?” he said.

Earlier, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman maintained that the education sector has the highest allocation in the 2025 budget with P1.055 trillion, which includes allotments for nonbasic educational institutions such as military and police academies.

Abad also pointed out that the Sin Tax Reform Act mandates that 80% of revenues from tobacco products and soda be allocated to PhilHealth’s universal health care.

“Can a general law, like a General Appropriations Act, amend specific laws, like the Excise Tax Reform Act? The latter declares the legislative intent more clearly than the former,” he said.

Is there anything the people can do? Abad said: “People should express outrage at what’s happening.”

This appears to be the plan of the group Clergy & Citizenry for Good Governance, which has issued an invitation to the public to an “indignation concert and rally” at the Edsa Shrine on Jan. 31 at 3-7 p.m. “The gathering [will show] our dissatisfaction with the 2025 General Appropriation Act, considered as [an] election budget and the worst budget in Philippine history,” the group said in its announcement. “Let us unite against this dangerous development and demand better responsibility, transparency, and good governance in resource management.”

‘Unclear goals and guidelines’   

In his own talk, economist JC Punongbayan dwelt on problems involving “ayuda.”

Punongbayan noted that while the allocation for 4Ps had dipped from the 2024 budget to the 2025 budget, the allotment for AICS had increased.

He said conditional cash transfers had been sidelined despite empirical evidence that 4Ps has worked to improve the education and health of poor children.

He also pointed out that “ayuda” programs tended to be duplicated due to “unclear goals and guidelines,” and cited the DPWH’s Assistance to Youth and Unemployed for Development and Advancement Program that was discontinued because it overlapped with Tupad.  

Punongbayan said Speaker Romualdez has his own “ayuda” projects such as Start-up Investment Business and Livelihood Program (Sibol), Cash Assistance and Rice Distribution (CARD) and Integrated Scholarships and Incentives Program for the Youth (Isip)—all components of AICS—as well as Farmers’ Assistance for Recovery and Modernization (FARM) under Tupad/AICS. 

“‘Ayuda’ has ballooned in the runup to the 2025 midterm elections,” Punongbayan said. “It will pave the way for legalized vote-buying.” 

To break the cycle of poverty, it would be better to rely on conditional cash transfers by implementing a “properly-budgeted” 4Ps program, Punongbayan said.

He said that if short-term “ayuda” must be distributed, it must be based on a “vetted” master list of poor households, or on the national ID.

By focusing on short-term “ayuda” instead of the “more sensible” 4Ps, the administration is “sabotaging its own long-term development goals, like poverty reduction,” he added.

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