The more they “changed” the 2025 national budget, the more it stayed the same pork-laden, excessive funding proposal that is inconsistent with the people’s genuine interest and hews closely to the original intent—automatically allocate money for debt payment since the Marcos Jr. administration is a perennial borrower, like the wastrel Rodrigo Duterte regime that incurred more debt than all previous presidents combined.
Marcos Jr. does not deserve congratulations for trying to wangle what to him is a budget “consistent” with his administration’s “priorities.” The people must remember that Congress no longer exercises the power of the purse since martial law was imposed. Under Malacanang’s direction, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) crafts the annual appropriations bill and the two houses of Congress are technically “saling-pusa” in the process. The budget-making process starts and ends with Malacanang so the buck stops there.
All pompous declarations that Marcos Jr. burned the midnight oil and lucubrate a sane, viable, and relevant annual budget should not amuse anyone. Marcos Jr. had no choice but provide a diversionary scheme to rob the wind from the sail of cousin Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez as critics found that the redundant AKAP fund was restored, with P21 billion allocated for the Lower House and P5-billion for the Senate, while the cherished Tingog also had its own “health care program” to compete with the Department of Health (DOH) and the operating programs of local government units (LGUs.) Romualdez’s wife also controls a powerful House committee, giving the lie to protestations, or affirmations, that nepotism doesn’t rule the roost at the Batasang Pambansa.
Palace propagandists should stop making a mountain over the molehill called “veto” of the grisly line items in the budget that Marcos Jr. had approved. Better to make a fuss about the “abuse” of the budget-making process than be blamed for it since the process starts and ends with him. Cutting a mere P194 billion from the 2025 budget does not absolve Marcos Jr. of liability since the funds could be juggled and the unprogrammed appropriations (UAs) stay for hungry lawmakers to profit from. Yet, it gives the impression that Marcos Jr. “cares” about the protests by the Makabayan Coalition which has demanded a transparent budget process that distributes scarce resources to spur employment generation, boost food production, improve irrigation nationwide and not only in the Ilocos Region, where industrious farmers like those in Piddig, Ilocos Norte who had been impounding water for irrigation for decades.
The vetoed items include the P26.065 billion worth of projects under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and P168.240 billion in UAs that can be funded by non-tax revenues, proceeds from foreign loans or money that Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, also known as Merlin the Magician, could sequester from the reserves of PhilHealth and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC), which was created by law to protect bank depositors from losing their hard-earned cash when banks collapse. The criminal activity of lawmakers who secure commissions from public works projects must stop. Merely killing P26 billion in projects that DPWH didn’t ask for, like what Marcos Jr. did, is no big deal. The annual ritual will continue non-stop.
Do the math and you will find the P194.305 billion shaved from the P6.352-trillion original budget is a shameful 3% of the entire caboodle. This is not going for the jugular and certainly not a stab at the heart of the bad habit that dies hard— bureaucrat capitalism. It is, to be precise, a spit in the ocean of graft. The Marcos Jr. “veto” is not about “regaining control” of the budget that he never lost! Rather, it is a crisis PR move to save the asses of the 23 members of the Bicameral Conference Committee (BCC) who masterminded the insertions. Marcos Jr. didn’t rage or fume when P289-billion was suddenly awarded to the DPWH but applauded when his war machine and its various instrumentalities were awarded and gained 50% in allocations and debt payment funds rose by more than 25%, an indication that the country is running huge deficits, spending more than what it earns.
“We take our role as stewards of our taxpayers’ money seriously. And for this reason, after an exhaustive and thorough review, we have directly vetoed over P194 billion worth of line items that are not consistent with our priorities,” Marcos Jr. boomed, even as critics slammed him for doing too little too late, which is actually his wont. He bungled rice and sugar importations when he sat concurrently as agriculture secretary, later on tossing the problem to Franco Tiu Laurel Jr., whose expertise is running a fleet of Frabelle tuna catchers to serve the Japanese market. Expertise in fisheries is not exactly equivalent to expertise in solving agricultural issues. The Marcos Jr. solution is more imports to make favored traders happy and condemn millions of Filipino farmers to a parlous future.
Marcos Jr. will naturally take credit for slashing the redundant AKAP program, which is as redundant as the Malasakit Centers of Bong Go, another layer added to the bureaucracy in aid of his reelection, and gloat over the cosmetic “changes” in the signed 2025 General Appropriations Act (2025 GAA) as if it were a classic life-and-death option. Sure, the UAs rose by 300% when the Lower House was left to its own devices but Marcos Jr. should be thankful it didn’t skyrocket by 500%, considering that lawmakers have no truck with fears that taxpayers will eventually revolt and that the regime could not improve the absorptive capacity of departments to spend their allocations and show concrete results. It is time for the Filipino people to exercise their oversight functions not only on budget making but on the scandalous shenanigans at the Palace. They should assert the simple fact that the Palace and Congress have no license to plunder.
