Just six days after the bicameral conference committee of the two chambers of Congress met and approved the national budget for 2025, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) denounced the evisceration of appropriations for social services, education and the national health care system while reinstating dubious doleouts that lawmakers obviously could use for the 2025 elections.
Aside from Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and his pal, AKO BIkol Rep. Elizaldy Co and Senate President Francis Escudero and Sen. Grace Poe, the people deserve to know who the other members of the notorious panel were. Nothing was ever officially disclosed about the deliberations of the committee at the Manila Hotel on Dec. 11, 2024, and how the two chambers gifted themselves with increased appropriations, with the smaller Senate getting an increase of ₱P1 billion and the Lower House snatching a Christmas gift of ₱P18.8 billion.
The entire trouble with the proceedings of the bicameral conference committee is that they were “in camera” or in secret, with congressmen and senators complaining that the panel arrogates unto itself the duty of adding or subtracting budget items in violation of the law which says that nothing could be added to the acts approved by Congress. In short, the panel legislates anew, deleting items approved in the plenary or adding appropriations in aid of reelection. The people, KMP argues, deserve to know who the white shadows of the bicameral conference committee are and who among them maneuvered to bloat the public works budget, scrap the mandatory subsidy for PhilHealth (which, by law, gets its money from sin taxes as a contribution for indigents), provide threadbare allocations for state universities and colleges (SUCs) and reduce substantially the funding for public primary and secondary schools.
KMP finds it atrocious that the very same Lower House that has been investigating Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio for plundering the budgets of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) would also commit the very same act about the 2025 appropriations bill. It is equally hard to believe that the proposed budget, which originated from the Executive Department, would have been “lean and mean” but ended up with inexplicable reductions and additions, the worst of which littered the allocation for the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH.) The department’s budget was boosted by ₱P289-billion without asking, raising its 2025 allocation to ₱ P1.113 trillion.
Doing the math on this insertion, the ₱ P289 billion translates to a clean ₱ P115.6 billion in cold cash for congressional sponsors at a commission of 40%. In case some of them have moderated their greed, the cut would be a charitable 20% or ₱P57.8-billion. The DPWH is the usual repository of bureaucrat-capitalist wealth, and is the reason why, as the unlamented president Rodrigo Duterte howled, “ang mga congressmen darating sa Lower House naka- Seiko, pag labas, naka Rolex. Sila darating sa Congress nakasakay sa Tamaraw, pag labas, naka Mercedes Benz.” Takes one to know one.
KMP said the Bicam-approved national budget prioritizes political interests over essential social services and slammed it as a blatant tool for electioneering and graft. “Farmers and the Filipino people are being shortchanged while politicians hoard funds for their own interests,” KMP chairperson and Makabayan senatorial candidate Danilo Ramos argued. “Habang naghihirap ang taumbayan, lalo pang pinapabayaan ang edukasyon, pampublikong kalusugan, at iba pang serbisyong panlipunan. Nakakapagngitngit na limpak ang pondo para sa Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIFs) at iba pang discretionary funds na madaling maabuso.”
Ramos noted the significant reductions for critical social services: DepEd lost ₱16.5 billion; the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) sustained a cut of ₱27.3 billion; the Department of Health (DOH) suffered a reduction of ₱35.1 billion, and; the Calamity Fund was shaved by ₱500 million despite recurring disasters. Worse, the bicameral conference committee gave zero subsidy to PhilHealth subsidies under the Universal Health Care Act (UHCA), arguing wrongly that it still has a reserve of ₱600 billion, effectively shifting the financial burden to members who have to endure higher contributions since January 2024. The state’s subsidy to PhilHealth, accumulated through sin taxes, started only in 2019.
On the other hand, allocations for discretionary funds are bloated, with the Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIFs) in the amount of ₱4 billion retained by the Office of the President (OP) while unprogrammed funds skyrocketed by ₱373 billion. Yet, the biggest allocation was reserved for the DPWH, which will now “manage” ₱1.114 trillion it never sought but which the bicameral conference committee thought it must enjoy. Talk of the huge DPWH appropriations since 2016, when now Sen. Mark Villar, son of ex-Senate President Manny Villar and outgoing Sen. Cynthia A. Villar, was appointed by Duterte to head the DPWH and the number of failed flood control projects soared.
