Ping: Almost all senators had insertions in 2025 budget

MANILA, Philippines — Almost all senators in the 19th Congress had budget insertions in the proposed 2025 national budget amounting to “hundreds of billions of pesos,” according to documents reviewed by Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who warned that the scale of the allocations was unprecedented.

Lacson said he obtained records showing the amounts of the insertions, at least on the Senate side, whether in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) or the bicameral version of the budget.

“We saw the list of senators with large budget insertions. Large. Unprecedented. I’m saying, in the 19th Congress, almost all had an insertion,” Lacson told radio dwIZ.

Senators of the 19th Congress who have holdover terms or have been reelected in the 20th include Alan Peter Cayetano, Pia Cayetano, Ronald dela Rosa, JV Ejercito, Chiz Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada, Sherwin Gatchalian, Bong Go, Risa Hontiveros, Lito Lapid, Loren Legarda, Imee Marcos, Robin Padilla, Raffy Tulfo, Joel Villanueva, Mark Villar and Juan Miguel Zubiri.

Other 19th Congress senators, whose terms either expired or failed in their reelection bid, include Sonny Angara, Nancy Binay, Koko Pimentel, Grace Poe, Bong Revilla, Francis Tolentino and Cynthia Villar.

During Blue Ribbon hearings on flood control, those so far implicated as having inserted funding and asked for kickbacks included Villanueva, Estrada, Escudero, Revilla and Binay.

Lacson said some of the items were tagged as for later release (FLR), a budgetary mechanism that withholds funds pending further approval, but these allocations were ultimately not released by Malacañang.

“Other items are FLR. It’s good they weren’t released by Malacañang, but still, it was hundreds of billions,” he said, but stressed he has yet to find out if items marked FLR later on received funds.

Lacson, also Blue Ribbon chair, said he shared the documents with Senate President Vicente Sotto III, describing the list of names and corresponding allocations as unusually large, stressing that the combined total reached into the hundreds of billions.

The senator linked the controversy to what he called a “crisis” in the Senate, saying the institution needed to confront the issue squarely.

“We cannot deny there is a crisis in the Senate right now, because a number of its members are now involved,” he said.