2027 budget: Bicam urged to block congressional insertions

MANILA, Philippines — This year’s bicameral conference committee on the proposed P7.2-trillion national budget for 2027 should ensure “genuine transparency” and prevent congressional insertions into the spending plan, rather than repeat last year’s “performative” arrangement, ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio said Sunday.

He noted that greater efforts for transparency are needed in this year’s joint budget talks to avoid repeating last year’s setup, when lawmakers approved hundreds of billions of pesos in standby funding.

“Livestreaming the bicam is like broadcasting a wrestling match that everyone knows is rigged,” Tinio said in a statement. “The pork allocations of the president and legislators survived last year, and they will survive again if we settle for this kind of performative transparency.”

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The 2027 budget process is now at the congressional level, where lawmakers will scrutinize the Marcos administration’s record-setting spending plan. The months-long review brings legislators and government agencies together to discuss proposed allocations, but Congress has the final say and can cut or adjust funding at its discretion.

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The bicameral conference committee is the final stop before Congress submits the budget to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for his signature. At that stage, congressmen and senators must reconcile differences in their versions of the spending plan and produce a measure acceptable to both.

Joint budget talks have traditionally been held behind closed doors, keeping the public in the dark about last-minute changes to the national spending plan.

Last year, the bicameral conference committee opened the hearings for the first time, broadcasting debates among lawmakers and their concessions to pass the budget bill.

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“We need true transparency in the budget process,” Tinio said in mixed English and Filipino, stressing that the public deserves “not the same spectacle” seen in last year’s joint congressional talks on the spending plan.

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“The public thought there would be changes. But what happened? The pork barrel insertions and bloated unprogrammed appropriations remained intact,” he added.

Unprogrammed funds are standby spending items that can only be released if excess revenues are collected or if the government borrows to finance them.

Last year, lawmakers placed P243.4 billion under that category, which drew criticism from civil watchdogs as the spending bypasses scrutiny and has been touted as a source of abuse tied to pork barrel and patronage projects.

Tinio said livestreaming joint congressional budget talks won’t be enough as lawmakers continue to insert standby funding into the spending plan. For next year, the Department of Budget and Management proposed P111.98 billion in unprogrammed funds.

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“If the government is truly serious about transparency, it should remove all forms of pork insertions,” he said. “True transparency demands the dismantling of all pork barrel mechanisms, not just cameras in the bicam.” /mcm