2025 budget not all that bad, says Lacson
The P6.326-trillion national budget for 2025 is not all bleak, three-time Sen. Panfilo Lacson said on Wednesday, because Congress removed a provision in last year’s spending law that allowed the questionable transfer of nearly P90 billion in “excess” funds of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).
But Lacson, who is seeking a fourth term as senator in May, acknowledged it was still not enough to keep the funds of PhilHealth and other government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) from being funneled to bankroll various unprogrammed appropriations.
By taking out the “legally flawed” provision in the budget law, the former senator said Malacañang and the Department of Finance (DOF) lost their “legal authority” from Congress to access the available funds of GOCCs like PhilHealth.
“Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that GOCC funds are protected from being realigned by Congress to unprogrammed appropriations,” Lacson told the Inquirer.
“With all that being said, congressional realignments between the regular budget and the unprogrammed appropriations is an unusual, if not irregular practice, in budget legislation owing to the difference in the nature and character of the two,” he said.
Lacson noted that regular budget items in the General Appropriations Act were already assured of being funded while those classified as unprogrammed would be financed later based on the availability of public funds.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Lacson said the decision of lawmakers that barred the executive department from tapping PhilHealth’s available funding was “worth mentioning.”
“This bars DOF from gobbling up PhilHealth funds in 2025. This may have also rendered the pending SC (Supreme Court) petitions on this particular issue moot and academic,” he said. “Making noise makes sense after all.”
Several groups had asked the high tribunal to overturn the DOF order reverting PhilHealth’s idle funds to the national treasury to finance unprogrammed appropriations.
No 2025 subsidy
This subsequently prompted members of the bicameral conference committee to deny PhilHealth’s request of P74 billion in government subsidy for 2025.
Sen. Grace Poe, who defended the Marcos administration’s spending program during the Senate budget deliberations, agreed that the removal of the budget provision on the use of available funds of GOCCs would keep PhilHealth’s funding intact.
She said they made sure that state agencies would be able to “fully utilize” the allotments for the programs they had outlined this year.
According to Poe, Congress made its “policy stance clear that there shall be no hidden fund transfers in the future.”
“Nevertheless, we call on these government entities to fully utilize the subsidies allocated to them in the national budget to ensure that no public fund will again become idle,” Poe said in a Viber message.
