The Supreme Court (SC) has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent Finance Secretary Ralph Recto from fiddling with the P90-billion of PhilHealth funds based on a provision in the 2024 General Appropriations Act (GAA) that permits him to sequester “excess funds” from government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs) and use the money for “other purposes, like spending for projects covered by unprogrammed appropriations (UA.)
SC’s TRO is a slap in the wrist of Recto, who is not supposed to meddle with the function of Congress as the one appropriating funds for the annual budget. Since lawmakers, principally from the House of Representatives, are the ones technically working on the yearly GAA, they are the ones who control how the money is to be allocated. Yet, there is this strange committee that actually overrules the lesser mortals in the House as far as appropriations are concerned.
It is called the bicameral conference committee (BCC), which works “sub rosa” and leaves no paper trail on how “conflicting” allocations are “reconciled” and enrolled in the final version of the GAA. As Recto argues, there is a provision in the 2024 GAA that legitimizes the sequestration of “idle” funds from GOCCs to “finance” UA projects and programs. The trouble is that the lesser mortals at Batasang Pambansa were all blindsided as the powerful creatures that control BCC inserted that provision and provided Recto with the authority to transfer funds for the pet projects of the BCC members, both from the House and the Senate.
This provision stumped congressmen who have sworn to high heavens that such insertion was never tackled during budget deliberations. Now, the cat is out of the bag. The BCC magicians are to blame, and Recto might as well use index finger to tag the culprits before the court. “We give our full cooperation to the SC as we look forward to the opportunity to shed light on the issues presented during the oral arguments. With this honorable platform, we trust that all issues will be addressed once and for all,” Recto, who insisted the transfer was legal, stressed.
Recto can argue all day long about the legality of his action and invoke the approval of his move by the Governance Commission for GOCCs (GCG), the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) and the Commission on Audit (COA.) Yet, not everything legal is moral and the reprehensible act of transferring funds from PhilHealth, which is the anchor of the universal health care system, leads to absconding funds for health assistance and medical care for PhilHealth members and beneficiaries as well as indigents whose treatment are subsidized by the state through the corporation.
The BCC should be examined as well since it is at the root of the P90-billion transfer mess. As a thorough study of the budget showed, the BCC conferees are not limited to reconciling the differences in the bill but may introduce new provisions to the proposal or eviscerate the legislation and report out an entirely new bill. Technically, the BCC should explain the conflicting provisions as well as the reconciled version, which must be ratified by both chambers. Yet, the budget Bicam acts as the “Third Chamber,” with deliberations conducted behind closed doors, far from the prying eyes of watchdogs. The result for the tax-paying public has been parlous as the BCC bloated the public works budget from ₱717 billion to ₱893 billion in 2023. For this year, the budget was increased from ₱821-billion to ₱997-billion. Curiously, both increases were similar at ₱ 176 billion each year.
For all their pontifications about being persnickety about the judicious use of public coffers, the BCC, as one research group alleged, has become a “breeding ground fort corrupt and unfair practices.” It is actually a major reason why graft eats up anywhere from the conservative 20% of the budget to the inexcusable 40% of the GAA every year. Without transparency and accountability, the budget BCC allows Congress to abuse its power of the purse. Thus, insertions galore pave the way for massive budget reallocations, “double and overlapping” appropriations and new budget items and everything accomplished off the record and sans paper trail. Worse, the bicam report does not include any justification for the amendments and revisions done by legislators.
It is worth noting that the UA surged for three straight years, from 2022 to 2024. The Office of the President (OP) proposed UAs that were substantially increased by lawmakers. It went up by P100 billion in 2022, doubled to P219 billion in 2023, and then raised more than 200% to P449.541 billion this year. It means that the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration has become addicted to the annual padding of UAs. In contrast, the only UA that specifically addressed disasters was made in 2010, when an increase of P50-billion was made for Support to Calamity-Related Programs and
Projects. This item is crucial and should have automatic appropriations since the country has become married to frequent typhoons that cause floods and landslides, not to mention earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. This is the kind of UA that merits public approval in case Recto is reading and listening.
