What happens now?

Now that the Supreme Court has declared controversial allocations in 2024, 2025 and portions of the 2026 national budgets unconstitutional, what happens next?

The money has been spent (or stolen?) and we are not getting it back. Indeed, even the Supreme Court applied the doctrine of operative fact which means the money already spent does not need to be returned in the presumption that those concerned acted in good faith.

Good faith? My foot! Those officials knew what they were doing and it wasn’t for the public good. They have always had larceny in their hearts, salivating and with tears of joy while they made billions of pesos in potential kickbacks codified into law.

At best, the Solicitor General advised the President and the budget department to stop spending parts of the 2026 national budget that had been declared unconstitutional.

The good news is… the budget department confirmed that virtually no money has been illegally spent from the nullified 2026 provisions yet since they have limited the 2026 unprogrammed fund releases to legal foreign-assisted projects.

We are told that authors, proponents and implementers of the unconstitutional budget provisions can still face individual civil, criminal or administrative liability if they are found to have acted in bad faith. That will take some doing, given our judicial system.

What are we left with? According to explanations from the Office of the Solicitor General and the Supreme Court Spokesperson, the high court’s ruling serves primarily as a constitutional guardrail for future budget-making rather than an order to claw back past disbursements.

That means, the ruling permanently bars Congress from inflating unprogrammed standby funds beyond the President’s total recommended ceiling. But knowing how crafty the evil minds of our legislators are, they will find a way around the ruling like they did on the PDAF ruling during the PNoy era.

The test of congressional sincerity and respect for the high court ruling will come in the next few weeks as the Senate works on the 2027 budget bill passed by the House. Let’s see what they will do with the unprogrammed items and lump-sum provisions the House inserted in the proposed 2027 national budget.

The Supreme Court ruling validated the objections of budget watchdogs to the insertions introduced by the House in the P7.2-trillion 2027 national budget.

Civil society watchdogs recently raised major red flags over the House-approved 2027 budget, exposing P179 billion in last-minute pork-like insertions into public works.

The watchdogs also noted that the House slashed P93 billion from carefully planned foreign-assisted infrastructure projects and inserted P190 billion into unitemized local allocations without any public attachments or detailed unit price analyses.

Budget watchdogs explain that by hiding the true purpose of these lump sums behind missing or intentionally corrupted data, House leaders designed these line items to serve as a “shadow pork barrel” due to their broad, unitemized and discretionary nature.

The Supreme Court ruling directly declared lack of transparency is unconstitutional. The court permanently prohibited overly broad, unitemized provisions because they lacked prioritization standards and essentially functioned as illicit lump-sum appropriations.

The Court also ruled that bloating unprogrammed allocations beyond the executive’s request — such as Congress adding P449.5 billion to the 2024 budget —constitutes a grave abuse of discretion.

Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian announced that the Senate will actively remove the unconstitutional spending provisions struck down by the court and drastically tighten safeguards on the remaining P111.2 billion in proposed unprogrammed appropriations.

Sen.  Ping Lacson noted the ruling’s “perfect timing,” providing the Senate with the constitutional leverage to undo P206 billion in realignments introduced in the House version. The Sen. plans to meticulously scrutinize and potentially reverse House cuts to foreign-assisted projects and its opaque diversions into massive flood control and farm-to-market roads.

The Senate Finance Committee, led by Sen.  JV Ejercito, is working with the DBM to ensure the total combined budget (programmed and unprogrammed) strictly adheres to the ceiling recommended by the President in the National Expenditure Program (NEP).

In the public mind, a serious crime has been committed but apparently, it can be legally argued otherwise. Who is culpable? Who should take responsibility and suffer consequences?

The executive and legislative leaders clearly share accountability. They knew their limits but they still chose to breach the constitutional ceiling.

The President’s own NEP set the limit, yet the Executive (BBM and his former budget secretary) accepted a General Appropriations Act that artificially inflated unprogrammed funds (by P449.5 billion in 2024).

BBM declined to exercise his line-item veto power over appropriations. By signing the budgets into law without vetoing the unprogrammed fund inflation or the broad lump-sum provisions, BBM allowed a constitutional violation. The former Budget Secretary released and administered these funds, which constitutes participation in the unconstitutional act.

Who determines culpability now? The Supreme Court’s ruling is about the constitutionality of the law, not individual criminal guilt. The Ombudsman must investigate who is guilty of grave misconduct or violation of the Constitution.

If the Ombudsman finds probable cause that the President (after his term, due to presidential immunity), the former Budget Secretary, or congressional leaders acted in bad faith, charges must be filed and proven in the Sandiganbayan.

If congressional leaders claimed benefits from, or directed money to ghost, bloated or substandard projects, they lose their legal shield of so-called good faith.

Oh well! What the public sees as a complete betrayal of public trust will likely go unpunished. Even now, they are going back to the Supreme Court feeling aggrieved that their privileges as independent branches of government have been supposedly curtailed by the decision.

On the contrary, that landmark Supreme Court decision shows how the constitutional checks and balances feature works. That’s our consuelo de bobo. But it is an empty victory unless some people are jailed.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco