The logical thing to do for Malacanang was not to delay the signing of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) but to declare immediately the President will veto it, no ifs or buts, since it has met universal condemnation, with farmers slamming its “massacre” of appropriations for social services, doctors and health experts decrying the deletion of subsidies for PhilHealth as mandated by and the strange allocation of P289 billion for the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to bloat its budget to a record P1.113-trillion when the agency did not ask for it.
Yet, the Palace chose to make a tactical retreat and announced that there would be no signing of the 2025 GAA on Dec. 20. Indeed, the GAA is a mixed bag of projects and programs to be funded by taxpayers and there is no assurance that in its present form, it would be a prudent budget designed, as the Congress blurb declares, to be judiciously deployed to “generate jobs,” “support social services,” “improve the educational system” and embark on an infrastructure program designed to “sustain economic progress.”
For the bicameral conference committee (BCC) to agree during its Dec. 11, 2024 meeting at the Manila Hotel that the proposed budget needed “emergency surgery” indicated that the the request to do so must have been so strong that its members would gamble their careers on it. Yes, the Palace wanted allowances for cops and soldiers raised along with the appropriations for the Department of National Defense (DND), and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) but did it command that the subsidy for PhilHealth be scrapped entirely on the facile argument that the agency has P600-million in reserve? Did not PhilHealth give away to Finance Secretary Ralph Recto a big chunk of its P90 billion for the government’s unprogrammed appropriations (UAs), not a single one of which has been disclosed?
Even after officials of the Department of Education (DepEd) tagged Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio for fiscal mismanagement, the inefficient deployment of funds in regional offices, the misuse of the undeserved Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIFs) that targeted school bullies, and high school activists, along with the 1.5 million items that her team kept in warehouses and did not distribute to schools nationwide, the BCC punished DepEd by slashing P12 billion from its 2025 budget.
In another case of BCC’s flouting the law, with the Constitution technically mandating full support to the educational system, the committee gave the DPWH P1.113-trillion for next year, far bigger than the combined budgets of the DepEd, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and state colleges and universities (SCUs.) Indeed, the entire educational sector got only P912 billion, with DepEd getting P737 billion, P122-billion for SCUs, P21 billion for TESDA and P33 billion for CHED. DPWH’s budget for next year was a whopping P1.113 trillion, or P201 billion higher than the educational sector.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III criticized the BCC’s use of the budget scalpel, warning that the Constitution is very clear that the state has to prioritize the education sector. By slashing the funding for DepEd, the BCC is punishing the millions of pupils and high school students that had been neglected by Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio in the past two years. The DepEd will not even be able to pursue the training and deployment of quality teachers, improve educational technology and intensify instruction to include learning at home. The errors committed by the previous education secretary must not be repeated and the best way to do it is to deploy more resources to correct those errors.
Adding to the problems of the 2025 GAA is the incredible pumping of P531 billion in UAs, which is untenable as it cannot be supported by revenues and new taxes. Worse, the National Expenditure Program (NEP) for UAs was only P158 billion, Pimentel argued. The new funding for UAs was P373 billion, more than double the NEP level. Once approved, these UAs might as well be dispersed among favored congressmen and senators, including those who have not returned their wasted pork barrel as ordered by the courts. They got exonerated but their underlings have been convicted.
Aside from the irrational use of the congressional scalpel, critics have condemned the BCC for cutting P50 billion from the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program copied from a Mexican model that in turn borrowed from a Cuban program of efficient social amelioration. While the CCT has been lauded, it has not improved incomes or created livelihood opportunities. It maintains the same iniquities but reduces social tensions as beneficiaries wait for their CCT funds rather than question why they cannot rise higher on the social ladder. Indeed, crafting the annual budget should hew closely to a program that liberates the people rather than enslaves them and condemns to just watch the unmitigated plunder being committed before their very eyes.
