Senators promise transparency, close scrutiny of 2027 budget bill

MANILA — Senators said they will ensure that budget increases in the national budgets from 2024 to 2026 that the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional will not be in the 2027 budget now pending before the Senate.

The SC, in a decision released on Tuesday, declared the 2024 and 2025 national budgets and some provisions of the 2026 national budget unconstitutional over prohibited lump-sum increases.

Senate President Pro Tempore Vicente Sotto III said the Senate will make sure the budget process will be transparent: “Naka-livestream, malinis, malinaw, alam ng mga tao saan pupunta.”

(It will be livestreamed, clean, clear and people will know where the money will go.)

He said that he has heard “allegations” that some provisions in the proposed budget bill have been tinkered with.

“Again, and [if] it will fall into the category of what the Supreme Court is saying, we will not allow it in the Senate,” he said.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, meanwhile, said the Supreme Court decision “couldn’t have come at a better time when the House version of the 2027 General Appropriations Bill is undergoing scrutiny by the Senate.”

Lacson previously said there would be “more tears”among members of the House of Representatives as the Senate looks into alleged red flags in the House version of the budget bill.

He said the Senate may restore “hundreds of billions” of pesos in cuts and realignments that the House made, including changes to funds for Foreign-Assisted Projects and additional funding for flood-control projects.

Differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget bill will be reconciled in a bicameral conference, a meeting that has historically been held behind closed doors and where insertions and realignments are done.

The SC, in its decision, flagged an increase in unprogrammed appropriations in the 2024 budget made during the bicameral conference.

It said the Bicameral Conference Committee’s power “exists only when there are disagreeing provisions in the House and Senate versions of the bill.”

The nature of those provisions “determine the scope of their authority and the allowable extent of the changes or amendments to settle [them],” it also said. 

Lacson added the budgets for 2024 and 2025 “will go down in history as the worst budgets ever passed by Congress” since the 2013 General Appropriatons Act.

The 2013 budget included the Disbursement Acceleration Program, which the Supreme Court struck down for allowing “cross-border” use of savings to agencies outside the executive branch and to projects not included in the national budget. — RG Cruz, ABS-CBN News