Senate restores Sara’s draft budget to P889M
The Senate has restored the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) 2026 budget to its original level of P889 million, approving it in plenary on Thursday in less than five minutes—with no questions asked and no objections made—in stark contrast to the contentious process at the House of Representatives.
The next hurdle will be at the bicameral level where the Senate and the House must reconcile their versions of the OVP budget. There was no need for such last year because the Senate had then adopted the House-approved P733 million for the OVP after P1.29 billion of the original proposal was realigned to other agencies.
The House earlier reduced the OVP budget to P733 million, similar to its 2025 budget, after Vice President Sara Duterte snubbed budget deliberations over her unmet demands, including that President Marcos should also show up to defend his office’s budget.
The Vice President and the House had been feuding over her controversial intelligence funds when she was still education secretary. In November last year, the House cited Duterte’s chief of staff Zuleika Lopez for contempt and detained her at the Batasang Pambansa.
The Vice President then refused to attend any of this year’s budget deliberations at the House.
She, however, showed up at the Senate on Thursday, but stayed only briefly as the entire process finished faster than last year’s 10-minute record.
‘Next year na’
Duterte faced the media shortly after, but dodged political questions.
“Thank you, next year na,” she told reporters when asked to comment on resigned Rep. Zaldy Co’s statements supposedly linking Mr. Marcos to graft-related anomalies in the national budget.
This was also her answer when she was pressed to disclose whether she was ready to succeed the President amid rumors of a destabilization plot.
Duterte further deflected queries by extending holiday greetings to the media instead.
“And I wish you good health in the year 2026. We’d like to thank the Senate of the Philippines for approving the OVP year 2026 budget,” she said.
Only Sen. Robinhood Padilla, a known Duterte ally, manifested his support for the OVP’s proposed funding, after Sen. JV Ejercito moved for its approval.
“I am pleased because here in our chamber, we did not reduce the budget of our Vice President; instead, we increased it,” Padilla said in Filipino.
He went on to praise Duterte, who he said, has always helped Filipinos “whenever calamities, sorrow, or death occur.”
“I am happy and grateful to our colleagues. Thank you very much, and I am glad that the constraint or pressure against our Vice President did not come from this chamber,” he added.
In October, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri moved to extend parliamentary courtesy to the OVP at the committee level, saying that its proposed budget for next year was already “lean and mean.”
The OVP’s budget did not include allocations for intelligence funds next year.
Duterte had earlier said that she did not ask for a significantly higher budget in 2026 to avoid putting OVP officials in embarrassing situations during budget deliberations.
“I don’t like to see OVP personnel being embarrassed when they face the House or the Senate,” the Vice President said in June ahead of Mr. Marcos’ submission of the National Expenditure Program to Congress.
