With four days left before the year ends, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. is now hurdling the biggest challenge to his leadership – a flawed budget courtesy of the greedy members of the House of Representatives, which he must correct or face impeachment.
At this juncture, it is anybody's guess what motivated the members of HoR to cut the budget for education– which has topmost priority under the Constitution second to none– depriving the Philhealth of its subsidy because of inefficiency in using its moneys and cutting budgets for social services, among others but bloating the budget of public works which did not request for such augmentation but which obviously is intended for the disposal of the greedy politicos in the House to fund their 2025 campaigns and patronage projects, in short for the outlawed pork barrel system.
Although the President is expected to sign the P6.352 trillion budget on December 30, the Center for People Empowerment Governance blamed the budget impasse on the fact that the Chief Executive “may never have had a clear agenda, which legislators took as an opportunity to put forward their electoral objectives,” reported Business Mirror.
The think tank said the refusal of Marcos to return the budget bill to the congressional Bicameral Committee revealed a serious disconnect between the Office of the President and the legislature regarding their fiscal and economic thrusts.
“This exposed the President’s weak ability to muster leadership among the legislators to promote his budgetary and financial objectives,” CenPEG said.
CeNPEG expressed concern over the P6.352 trillion 2025 national budget approved by the Bicameral Conference Committee on December 11, citing imbalanced priorities and inadequate attention to the needs of vulnerable sectors.
CenPEG's Director for Policy Studies Bobby Tuazon criticized the allocation of significant funds to politically sensitive offices like the Office of the Vice President (P733 million), while essential programs like education suffered a cut of P12 billion when the education crisis continues to loom.
“This budget reflects a troubling disconnect between stated priorities and actual allocations. Programs that directly address poverty and inequality are being reduced, while discretionary allocations remain untouched,” Tuazon said in a press statement.
CenPEG also expressed concerns over the zero subsidy for PhilHealth in 2025. While the agency has P600 billion in reserves, Tuazon said this move undermines the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act, which requires the government to subsidize health coverage for indigents, senior citizens, and other vulnerable groups.
“This decision risks worsening health inequities. PhilHealth’s reserves are not a replacement for mandated subsidies, especially when millions of Filipinos depend on these funds for basic healthcare,” Tuazon stated.
The organization also assailed the reduced budget for the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), which was reverted to P28.7 billion. “The cuts will affect critical agencies like PAGASA and Phivolcs, hampering disaster preparedness efforts amid increasing typhoons and volcanic activity,” Tuazon said.
“Despite frequent disasters, our agencies lack the necessary resources to strengthen monitoring systems and provide timely warnings. This puts Filipino lives at risk and demonstrates the lack of forward-thinking in our national budget,” Tuazon added.
CenPEG emphasized the need for a more transparent, equitable, and inclusive approach to national budgeting. “The government must ensure that every peso serves the people, especially the poor and vulnerable. The 2025 budget should be a tool for inclusive development, not a reflection of political compromises,” Tuazon concluded.
A crisis like no other
Similarly former Senator Kit Tatad in his column said the President may be able to withstand all other crises of governance, including those involving the Duterte family and the South China Sea, but he cannot ignore the crisis he is facing on the 2025 national budget.
There is no other word to describe it.
At the beginning of the 2025 budget cycle, the President submitted a proposed spending program of P6.352 trillion to the House of Representatives. We have a bicameral Congress composed of the Senate and the House, but it is in the House where all bills involving appropriations must originate. From the House, the proposed GAA went to the Senate for its concurrence or amendments. The bill was then subjected to three readings in both houses, and thereafter consolidated into one final measure by a bicameral conference committee composed of members from the two houses. The duty of this committee is to harmonize all disagreeing portions of the House and Senate bills. The harmonized version was then ratified by both houses and submitted to the President for his signature as law.
It was at this point that certain defects of the bill surfaced. Under the Constitution, the "Congress may not increase the appropriations recommended by the president for the operation of the government as specified in the budget." The Constitution also provides that "the State shall assign the highest budget priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment."
Upon closer inspection, the bicam conference committee, sometimes described as the "third house" of Congress, tried to reshape the president's budget by changing its priorities. In violation of the constitutional mandate that gives the highest budget priority to education, the conference committee slashed the Department of Education budget by at least P12 billion, drawing a strong protest from Secretary Sonny Angara, a former senator, now DepEd's head.
Education is an urgent priority second to none. For the current school year, there are 21 million students enrolled, and 836,193 teachers employed, each one teaching 24 to 26 learners as the national average, but 52 in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and 20 in the Cordillera Autonomous Region, in classrooms that hold 35 students in primary school and 40 in junior and senior high school. The nation is supposed to be 90,000 teachers short.
According to the latest World Bank data, 90 percent of Filipino children age 10 are having serious difficulty reading and understanding simple text. The results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which assessed the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in math, reading and science, put the Filipinos' average score at third from the bottom in science; sixth from the bottom in math; and sixth from the bottom in reading.
According to this report, 78 percent of the students failed to reach the minimum level of efficiency in the three PISA subjects; only 19 percent achieved overall reading and math literacy. According to the World Population Review of the Smartest Country, the Philippines, with a rating of 81.64, ranks No. 111 among 199 countries, with the following countries on top: Japan (106.48), Taiwan (106.47), Singapore (105.89), Hong Kong (105.39), China (104.10), South Korea (102.35), Belarus (101.60), Finland (101.20), Liechtenstein (101.07) and Germany (100.74).
The HoR gave the Department of Public Works and Highways an awesome P1.113-trillion budget for various infrastructure projects, it granted zero subsidy to Philippine Health Insurance Corp., which had to carry a heavy burden at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
This renders its continued viability in case of another pandemic at risk. Under the Constitution, "the State shall adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to health development which shall endeavor to make essential goods, health and other social services available to all the people at affordable cost. There shall be priority for the needs of the underprivileged sick, elderly, disabled, women and children. The State shall endeavor to provide free medical care to paupers."
Marcos has done the right thing by refusing to sign the proposed GAA from the "third House of Congress" and digging deep into it. Only by subjecting the national expenditure program to a line-by-line review can he make it fully compliant with the law and good governance.
He has therefore rejected it. I hope Marcos' prudence pays off, by coming out with a much-improved GAA he can defend proudly in any forum before his critics, Tatad said..