By Diego Morra
The more it changes, the more it stays the same, or even worse. That much can be gleaned from the reaction of various budget watchdogs after the House of Representatives, through Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Suansing, unveiled what she claimed to be a pork-free House Bill No. 4058, the Lower House’s version of the national budget for 2026, approved by the plenary on Oct. 10, 2025 and rejected by 12 lawmakers.
IBON Foundation executive director Sonny Africa as well as Kenneth Isaiah Ibasco Abante of We Solve Foundation and co-convenor of the People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) assailed HB 4508 for giving short shrift to many red flags that budget reform advocates had seen in the original version and wanted to lawmakers to address judiciously. In direct contempt of their own vow to enhance transparency, having invited budget watchdogs like PBC and IBON Foundation as “non-voting observers” in the budget process in August 2025, the observers were shut out from the proceedings of budget amendments review subcommittee (BARSc) headed by Suansing that spread out the P255-billion allocation cut from the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH.)
Repeating the conduct of what had been tagged as the “small committee” of the House that sneaked insertions into the 2025 budget already approved by the plenary, the BARSc convened on Sept. 22 to discuss the realignment of the DPWH budget cuts without any notice to the House minority and the civil society organizations (CSOs) had invited to make the budget process less opaque and acceptable to the general public, which bankrolls the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA). To show their disgust, CODE NGO, GoodGovPH, Sigaw ng Kabataan, FOI Youth Initiative and IBON Foundation issued a collective statement to criticize the Suansing panel.
As proof of their tokenism, the BARSc livestreamed the panel deliberations, with the “non-voting observers” reduced to watching the process on computer screens, guaranteeing that their virtual “presence” was proof that the Lower House was sincere in opening up the session for budget amendments. Abante and other PDC members argued that the House of Representatives mistake in shutting them out of the Sept. 22 session that would have allowed them to access all the documents, listen to the deliberations and weigh the relevance of amendments. To make matters worse, the chamber failed to approve the creation of an open budget transparency server. This server would indubitably permit citizens to trace how funds are allocated, who made changes in the appropriations and what pet projects have been pampered with big budgets.
Checking on the discrepancies between the National Expenditure Plan for 2026 (NEP 2026) and the revisions and BARSc amendments, PBC disclosed that rather than slash the appropriations, the panel added P79.66-billion to the P148.04 billion in the NEP 2026, bringing the total to P228.7 billion. Making the entire gig unpalatable, the House panel funded the same redundant “social assistance” programs that had been tagged as political dole-outs that benefit lawmakers. Indeed, the realigned allocations ended up with the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), with its NEP 2026 share of P27.03-billion increasing by P32.06 billion for a total of P60.09 billion.
The Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (Tupad) has an allocation of P12.14 billion in NEP 2026 but the BARSc added P14.82 billion to it, raising the budget to P26.96 billion. The budget for the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (Maifip) was raised by P26.73 billion from the P24.24 billion in NEP 2026, more than doubling it to P50.97 billion. The budget for confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) got an additional P100 million, bolstering the outlay to P10.90 billion. The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) fund for barangays retained a huge P8.1 billion allotment. For the Local Government Support Fund (LGSF), the NEP 2026 allotment was P65.73 billion but BARSc gave it an extra P5.95 billion to make it P71.68 billion.
BARSc also refused to remove the P250-billion un-programmed appropriations and rejected the proposal to seek presidential approved before such appropriations are disbursed, prompting ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio to say that it will just be “another slush fund for corruption.” By removing the required presidential approval, he added, “they’re creating plausible deniability for corruption.” For IBON’s Sonny Africa, “President Marcos Jr.’s supposed crackdown on corrupt flood control projects was masterful theater…It was misdirection to hide P696 billion in pork for the President and lawmakers in the budget passed by the House of Representatives, and an attack to weaken the opposition with the view of keeping power beyond 2028.”
At the Senate, lawmakers were stumped by the use of “allocable” as a term to describe how infrastructure projects are distributed by DPWH engineering districts to congressional jurisdictions, purportedly to circumvent the ban on pork barrel enunciated in a Supreme Court (SC) decision whose ponente, ironically, was Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin, now Executive Secretary. Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon does not know what “allocable” means, compelling an undersecretary to explain what it means in the bureaucracy that Dizon now heads. Yet, the fish rots first at the head, as Erasmus said. As it is, the entire government has to be indicted. The corruption issue has become a *cul-de-sac. #
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WORD OF THE DAY: Cul-de-sac – In original French, it means “bottom of the sack.” As an expression, it means a route or course leading nowhere.
