Fixing a bad budget

THE BROADER VIEW

- HARRY ROQUE

The 2025 proposed national budget remains in the headlines for two weeks now. An unprecedented public uproar generated by the unchecked greed of our lawmakers, reflected in the unconstitutional provisions of the proposed 2025 national budget, forced President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to re-schedule the signing of what has been dubbed as the most corrupt budget in Philippine history on Rizal Day, Dec. 30.

His executive secretary, Lucas Bersamin, earlier said that the President postponed the original budget signing set on Dec. 20, saying it needed "more time for a rigorous and exhaustive review."

As I mentioned in my previous column, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) was the biggest winner in the bastardized budget, with Congress pouring in an extra P288.65 billion, making the DPWH budget balloon into a record-high of P1.113 trillion.

The amount of P288.65 billion was arrived at by deducting funds from various agencies, including P10 billion from the Department of Education (DepEd), P30 billion from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), P50 billion from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), P74 billion from the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), among others.

The proposed 2025 national budget clearly favors politicians who want to safeguard their positions of power by turning the budget into their own personal slush fund in an election year. This rottenness in our budget system was earlier exposed by Vice President Inday Sara Duterte when she revealed that only two personalities control the budget of the Philippines, namely House Speaker Martin Romualdez and his loyal factotum, Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Elizaldy Co.