The House of Representatives approved last week on third and final reading the proposed 2027 General Appropriations Bill (GAB). Dubbed “The President’s Budget,” it contains the P7.2-trillion National Expenditure Program (NEP) for next year. President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) endorsed it for approval in the 20th Congress.
The NEP is the original GAB as approved by PBBM and submitted to Congress by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). Among other items in the 2027 GAB were priority projects and measures that PBBM identified in his penultimate State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July. This is the budget bill for the year before both PBBM and members of the current Congress bow out at the end of their respective terms of office.
Voting 281-13 with one abstention, pro-administration House lawmakers stamped their approval on the 2027 GAB under House Bill (HB) 10858. Like any budget bill, the 2027 GAB itemized the allocations for the entire bureaucracy – from the executive, legislative to the judicial branches of government, including constitutionally autonomous agencies.
Once approved into law, the proposed 2027 budget bill will fund not just the NEP but all the congressional amendments – another word for insertions – that went into it. So all these congressional amendments were made with moist eyes set on the next national and local elections in May 2028.
Except for the President who has a fixed term of six years with no re-election, House members are entitled to three years in office but can run for re-election for three consecutive terms. On the other hand, half of the Senate, or 12 senators, are on their first six years in office to lapse next year but can run for re-election for a second consecutive term. Some of them are “graduating” on their second and last term, like Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian, who can still run for higher office.
Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman George Erwin Garcia previously announced at our Kapihan sa Manila Bay the seven-man poll body is eyeing to set an earlier filing of certificates of candidacy (COCs), probably Sept. 20 to 26 next year. Under our country’s automated election laws, the Comelec is given the discretion to fix the dates of all its election-related activities before and after election day itself.
So for all intents and purposes, the 2027 GAB is an election budget.
The Lower House approved the 2027 GAB last Oct. 12, or weeks ahead of their original target to pass it before the end of this month. They approved it before adjournment for their scheduled month-long recess for the Undas observance.
Actually, it is a foregone conclusion it will be approved since budget and tax laws must emanate from the Lower House.
Despite its voluminous contents, the House was able to immediately transmit the approved 2027 GAB to the Senate. Although it was still being deliberated at the House, the senators were already conducting preliminary public hearings on their own copies of the 2027 NEP.
Rep. Mikaela Suansing, chairperson of the House appropriations committee, led and steered for the second consecutive year the deliberations of the 2027 GAB. Suansing handled the 2027 GAB at a time her immediate predecessors in the 19th Congress “badly mangled” the budget laws for the past three years. From 2022 all the way to 2025, the General Appropriations Act (GAA) approved each year were filled with “congressional insertions” of certain senators and House members.
The “congressional insertions” were identified and its proponents tagged as being behind the alleged multimillion-peso ghost flood control projects that went into the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) budget. A number of these lawmakers are currently under investigation, charged in court or already detained on graft and plunder cases.
They include the likes of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, former speaker Martin Romualdez and former Ako Bicol party list now fugitive Zaldy Co, who shepherded the GAAs from 2022 to 2025 as then House appropriations committee chairman. And several of their alleged cohorts of unscrupulous contractors and erring DPWH district engineers and other government officials are likewise cooling their heels in jail.
The House approval of the 2027 GAB went through the usual scrutiny, lorded over by the pro-administration House lawmakers. Still smarting from the aftermath of the flood control projects scandal, the House leadership headed by Speaker Faustino “Bojie” Dy trumpeted that the 2027 GAB reinforced food security and supported agricultural livelihoods by allotting P10 billion for farmers and fisherfolk and P4.96 billion for farm-to-market roads. Supposedly, the biggest chunk of the P7.2-trillion national budget for 2027 went to the Department of Education that got as much as P1.10 trillion.
Thus, it was reported the 2027 GAB breezed through its House approval, except for the dramatic tearing and crying her heart out of Suansing. Perhaps, the intense budget deliberations could really be too stressful for a very pregnant congresswoman from Nueva Ecija steering the 2027 GAB to approval.
Were they tears of joy and relief? Or was it due to the many congressional insertions that were forced upon her to defend? The optics were bad.
Printed copies of the 2027 GAB, as amended and approved by the Lower House, were turned over last week to the office of Sen. JV Ejercito as the chairman of the Senate finance committee, the House appropriations counterpart. Although himself a re-electionist senator, Sen. JV has repeatedly vowed in public he would not allow “congressional insertions” to go to whoever intends to line their pockets with public funds.
Chairing for the first time a budget bill, Sen. JV promised to restore a number of foreign-assisted infrastructure projects under the original NEP that were de-funded in the 2027 GAB. Civil society groups reported at least P190 billion worth of NEP infrastructure was suspiciously re-aligned.
Not included in the NEP, budget allocations grew for multi-purpose buildings in Ilocos Norte, Isabela and Nueva Ecija congressional districts.
Sad but true, this time under a new ruse. It’s the same old story over again.