After the ghost flood control and pork funding scandal caused a major disruption to our economy, the House of Representatives still couldn’t resist its evil streak and passed a budget as horrible and irresponsible as in previous years.
According to the comprehensive item-by-item analysis released by the People’s Budget Coalition (PBC), the 2027 P7.2-trillion national budget contained P1.06 trillion in “red flag” allocations.
The PBC’s 2027 budget analysis showed the House funneled funds into hyper-local pork barrel projects and temporary handouts rather than high-impact national infrastructure projects that can move our economy from the pits.
Here are examples:
“Soft pork” and discretionary aid: Billions allocated to localized social assistance that are highly vulnerable to political intervention and patronage ahead of the 2028 election.
“Hard pork”/unvetted infrastructure: Heavy insertions redirected into Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) local projects that lack proper project documentation or clear economic justifications.
Foreign-assisted project cuts: Congressmen rechanneled money into patronage programs by drastically cutting our counterpart funding for massive public transit projects, notably the Metro Manila Subway and the North-South Commuter Railway.
UP economist Cielo Magno, in an interview with Karen Davila on ANC, criticized the House-approved P7.2-trillion national budget, describing it as an “election budget” plagued by bad planning, misplaced priorities and systemic corruption.
Also, the delays in already approved foreign-assisted projects are costing us, among others, commitment fees.
When a project is delayed because our counterpart budget is slashed, the government must pay a penalty just to keep that credit line open.
Finance Secretary Frederick Go revealed that the government accumulated a massive P3.4 billion in total commitment fees from 2022 due to the slow utilization of official development assistance loans.
Delaying the project timelines further increases costs due to inflation, rising prices of construction materials (steel, cement) and extended labor contracts, which can inflate original project costs by tens of billions of pesos over time.
During the Senate deliberations for the 2027 budget, Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian sharply criticized the Department of Transportation (DOTr) over P295 million in transport-specific commitment fees, stressing that the government is spending vast public sums on penalties without citizens seeing any realized infrastructure.
But DOTr is not to blame. It has been the habit of Congress to sideline the DOTr’s projects to get funds for pork.
DOTr had been pleading for the restoration of P12.8 billion ($221.5 million) in proposed funding to buy new trains for Metro Manila’s Light Rail Transit Line 2 (LRT-2), which is operating with so few train sets that commuters experience long waiting times and crowding.
Because the problem is so dire for the commuters, DOTr is getting special permits to allow public utility buses to serve passengers along the LRT-2 corridor to ease peak-hour congestion.
Imagine that… an inefficient band-aid measure because congressmen want to fund multipurpose buildings and dole out pork.
Senate finance committee chairperson JV Ejercito publicly vowed to restore and protect the funding for the subway and railway lines. He argued that obligations to international partners must be honored directly through “programmed appropriations” to avoid compounding these bank penalties and to ensure the mass transit lines are not delayed any further.
Let us see if that happens and not just a press release from a senator.
Here are examples of how the House mangled the budget to accommodate its greed:
The House cut P34.7 billion directly from the Metro Manila Subway Project Phase 1 and the North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR) System.
The House also slashed an additional P53.5 billion from foreign-assisted bypass roads and flagship highway projects.
They also stripped P4.9 billion from the immunization program of DOH. Sana walang epidemic.
The House redirected an overwhelming P54 billion directly to local District Engineering Offices, the guys responsible for ghost projects. They allocated P42.7 billion for local multi-purpose buildings and P29.2 billion for local access roads – projects heavily controlled by individual congressmen. Shouldn’t these be funded by LGUs since they now have a larger share of government revenues?
So, it seems the House members are unable to prioritize the national interest over their own. It seems the evil within the hearts of our legislators is too difficult to resist.
It isn’t as if we have money to waste. In the projected government revenues of P5.21 trillion for 2027, debt interest payments will eat up more than half of that. With a budget of P7.2 trillion, a deficit of P1.7 trillion is expected.
To cover both this P1.7-trillion deficit and the P1.59-trillion maturing principal debt repayments, the Treasury must execute a much larger gross borrowing program of P3.30 trillion, bringing us very close to our absolute borrowing capacity.
A risk assessment by the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department reveals that the absolute 70 percent limit is dangerously close if the economy falters, which may just happen.
The members of the House who approved this budget are totally irresponsible. No shame. No conscience. Pa-iyak iyak pa kuno.
Dapat maisip ng mga kongresista na matindi ang kalagayan ng ating ekonomiya. Kulang ang investment dahil kulang ang infrastructure. Lubog sa utang ang gobyerno. Mahigit sa isang trilyon ang ninakaw ng mga miyembro ng Kongreso, mga opisyal ng DPWH at mga kontraktor sa ghost projects. Kulang na kulang ang budget sa edukasyon, agrikultura at kalusugan. Tinutulungan tayo ng Japan na pondohan ang kailangang infrastructure ngunit pinutol ng Kongreso ang ating counterpart fund. Kabastusan na yan sa mga Hapon na tumutulong lang.
Wala na yatang konsensya ang Kongreso. Puro kasakiman ang umiiral.
The House needs exorcism to flush out the evil within its walls.
Will the Senate produce a better budget? Will BBM veto the objectionable items even if his own son, as a senior House leader, seems part of the mess? BBM’s failure to impose a line-item veto the last time reduced his credibility in fighting corruption.
Does Congress want us to be a failed state soon?
Boo Chanco’s email address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on X @boochanco