Congress is rushing the passage of the national budget for 2026 to avoid a reenactment of the current outlay. Amid the scandal that has erupted over large-scale corruption in the budget process and public works projects, both Malacañang and Congress have promised reforms.
The complexity of the budget process allowed crooks to design the theft of billions in public funds from the annual national outlay, with taxpayers largely unaware of the institutionalized thievery.
Those who understand the process pointed out the ways by which billions have been diverted to the pockets of thieves during congressional deliberations on the General Appropriations Act.
The 2025 GAA has been described by critics as “the most corrupt budget ever,” with precious public funds ending up as kickbacks and the nation saddled with defective, substandard and even non-existent public works projects. Budget insertions were abused by lawmakers for personal gain, and secrecy in the budget deliberations allowed even more thievery to be carried out.
As part of efforts to regain public trust, both the House of Representatives and Senate have opened the budget deliberations to public scrutiny, with insertions supposedly no longer allowed.
Senators want to eliminate all unprogrammed appropriations, seen as the latest incarnation of the congressional pork barrel. The House scrapped unprogrammed appropriations except for the Office of the President.
But another version of the pork barrel was revealed recently by former public works undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral: “allocables.”
Retired Department of Public Works and Highways undersecretary Roberto Bernardo explained last month that allocables are effectively the pork barrel allotments of congressmen in the DPWH outlay, which are incorporated into the National Expenditure Program that the executive submits to Congress.
Combined with the insertions, this means lawmakers got pork barrel allocations before and during the budget deliberations. The system circumvents a prohibition on pork barrel-type funding allocations, which was imposed by the Supreme Court following the scandal over the Priority Development Assistance Fund, the former name of the pork barrel.
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reported that from 2023 to 2025, the highest shares of close to P1.2 trillion in allocables went to President Marcos’ son, Ilocos Norte 1st District Rep. Sandro Marcos, and cousin Leyte 1st District Rep. Martin Romualdez.
What Congress does with the allocables and the unprogrammed appropriations will be closely monitored. The nation is also expecting lawmakers to deliver on their promise to open to the public the bicameral conference on the budget.
These reforms cannot be one-off; they must be designed into the budget process for the long term. Lawmakers must show that they can be entrusted with people’s money.
