Lawmakers act on Marcos Sona call for budget transparency
Public watchdogs will now be allowed to observe all stages of congressional budget deliberations, including the secretive bicameral conference, if the Senate and the House of Representatives agree on it.
“We will seek to open the bicameral budget conference to civil society observers: a historic first,” Speaker Martin Romualdez said in plenary on Tuesday. “We will allow the participation of watchdogs in all levels of budget deliberation.”
Romualdez declared a “new era of transparency and accountability” in public budgeting following President Marcos’ challenge to make the national budget less prone to corruption.
In his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Monday, Mr. Marcos served notice that he would return a general appropriations bill (GAB) that is not aligned with the Executive Department’s National Expenditure Program (NEP).
“I am willing to do this even if we end up with a reenacted budget. I will not approve any budget that is not aligned with the government’s plan for the Filipino people,” he said.
Joint resolutions
Also on Tuesday, the liberal progressive bloc in the House filed Joint Resolution No. 2 seeking to open the bicameral conference committee budget deliberations to the public, either in person or online.
“What we want is a more transparent discussion of the budget, and to make everyone involved in the process accountable,” Albay Rep. Krisel Lagman told reporters.
A transparent bicameral conference “would ensure that we could see what they took out or added in the reconciled versions” of the two chambers, she added.
Joining Lagman in the resolution were Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima and Akbayan Representatives Chel Diokno, Perci Cendaña and Dadah Kiram Ismula.
In the Senate, the five-member minority bloc and two other colleagues also filed Joint Resolution No. 1 seeking transparency and accountability in the bicameral conference’s process for the national funding.
The senators said the bicameral conference’s deliberations on the P6.326-trillion 2025 national budget were attended by budget irregularities and distortions.
“The most serious irregularity was the violation of the constitutionally mandated provision that education shall have the highest budgetary priority,” they said in the resolution.
The resolution was introduced and signed by Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III and Senators Risa Hontiveros, Panfilo Lacson, Loren Legarda, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan; and Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV.
Insertions
Critics have called the 2025 the “most bungled” budget in recent history, rife with irregular insertions and last-minute realignments to the Department of Public Works and Highways during the bicameral conference.
Many of these insertions involved flood control projects, which Mr. Marcos said in his Sona had been milked by officials and contractors, but failed to mitigate flooding during the onslaught of monsoon rains. (See related story on this page.)
Public watchdogs have tagged the bicameral conference as the “third congress” because it has the power to realign billions of pesos of public funds and insert major amendments to the GAB, often away from the public eye.
In contrast, the budget deliberations at the committee and plenary levels are open to the public, whether on-site and online.
No ‘backroom haggling’
Commenting on the President’s threat to adopt a reenacted budget, Michael Henry Yusingco, senior research fellow at the Ateneo Policy Center, said: “That is the only way he can deliver all the audacious promises he made in his fourth Sona.”
Even so, he added that Congress “must still exercise this constitutional duty and get rid of unlawful allocations in the 2026 NEP such as confidential funds to civilian offices.”
And since both chambers were “operating from a trust deficit,” the only option left for them to “salvage their reputation from further sinking is to allow genuine public participation in the budget deliberations,” Yusingco said. —WITH REPORTS FROM CHARIE ABARCA, GABRIEL PABICO LALU AND IAN NICOLAS P. CIGARAL
