Brewing in the budget

Five days before Christmas Day, Filipinos are yet to feel the festive holiday mood as two interrelated events have sparked significant controversy and fired up people to be anxious and livid: the reallocation/misallocation of the budget and the zero government subsidy for the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth).

- HARRY ROQUE

For the first time in recent history, Congress gave the biggest chunk of the budget to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) with a whopping P1.113 trillion.

We all know the reason, of course. One social media post says it best: more DPWH budget, the more budget going to the pockets.

Flood control, the favorite infrastructure project of our lawmakers, constitutes almost 30 percent of the total budget of the DPWH in the last decade. From P42.2 billion in the 2015 General Appropriations Act (GAA), it skyrocketed to P244.5 billion in the 2024 GAA.

Meanwhile, the budget of the Department of Education (DepEd) was now slashed amounting to P737 billion, blatantly violating the Constitution, where the state shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education.

My alma mater, the University of the Philippines, received its largest budget cut in almost a decade with a total reduction of more than P2 billion.

PBBM, of course, can ask the bicameral conference committee (bicam) to reconvene. As of this writing, there has been no call yet on the possible reconvening.

Senate President Francis Escudero, who formerly headed the Senate finance committee, rejected calls asking PBBM to undo the bicam's move. He further said there was no need for Marcos to exercise his veto powers. There are funds, according to Escudero, that Marcos Jr. may tap as the latter is authorized to augment DepEd's budget by using the agency's unspent funds from previous years.