19/10/2025
NOW IS THE TIME FOR VIGILANCE!
Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@outlook.com
The Lower House, it appears, has approved the budget for the coming fiscal year. What the Senate will do with it is something we must all await. The vigilance that I have repeatedly urged on the part of citizens should have commenced with the budget deliberations in the House of Representatives. After all, many of these were public hearings. State University presidents were summoned for exchanges on their allocations — and when the final debate was held way past midnight, they were there — at least physically! But it is not too late for us to holler should we find something amiss or irregular. After the Bi-Cameral Conference Committee shall have fashioned a compromise version of the budget — a procedure not provided for in the Constitution but apparently necessary because of the way the legislative mill runs — the President must still sign the General Appropriations Act into law and, in the process, wield his line-item veto power when he deems it necessary. I have observed closely the workings of the President, and whatever his detractors — often the incurably rabid idolaters of their local deity — hurl against him, he is one who listens, who responds, who considers and ponders.
So, while Vince Dizon relentlessly pursues the hoodlums in the troubled department he now heads and Boying Remulla fends off criticism of his appointment as Ombudsman while running full speed ahead with the prosecution of the indictable, attention should be on the pending bill that, when signed, becomes the government's budget for the forthcoming year. Former Secretary Al Agra has come up with interesting and truly instructive "pubmats" first on "amendments versus insertions" and second, on "programmed and unprogrammed" appropriations. Since he has made them available in the public domain, I shall draw from them here.
An amendment is a change made to an item in the proposed budget. There can be an amendment if there is an existing provision. Amending the PHP 500 million allocation for a medical center to PHP 750 million is an example. There can be no doubt as to the legality of an amendment. The budget is a statute, and the chambers of Congress possess the power to deliberate on, introduce amendments to and revise the draft provisions of a statute. What they cannot do under the provisions of the Constitution is to increase the total amount proposed by the Executive Branch. That is a constitutional limitation.
An insertion, for its part, is the introduction of a new budget item or provision not originally included in the proposed budget. This takes place after the budget has been approved, at the bi-cameral conference committee stage. While, on the one hand, whatever the bi-cameral conference committee confects as the compromise version of the budget must still be approved by both chambers, there hovers the doubt as to the legality of insertions at this stage and on this level — a doubt not unconnected to the constitutionally questionable complexion of the bi-cameral conference committee itself.
Programmed appropriations are determined, fixed and become effective upon the approval of the annual budget. Unprogrammed appropriations are like some kind of a "wish list" under the heading "should funds be made available from excess revenue or additional financing". It is very similar to a household determining its priorities outside regular expenses that are to be bought "should the money be available". Through unprogrammed, these items must nevertheless be included in the annual budget so that public funds may be expended on them — should these funds become available. No public funds, after all, may be spent except on items for which expenditure is allowed by law.
We should know: What are the unprogrammed items in the proposed budget for the coming year? Who proposed them? Which LGUs or government agencies are to be benefited from them? While unprogrammed appropriations cannot be avoided — owing to the inability of even the most perspicacious legislator to foresee contingencies that may demand effective financial response from the government — insertions should be studiously avoided, coming as they do at a rather belated stage in the crafting of the budget. And this is just one more item that should be on the agenda of those who, like me, advocate charter amendments: the articulation of the powers, and limits thereto, of the Bi-Cameral Conference Committee.
Technically, insertions though do not violate what the Supreme Court proscribed in the Belgica case. It is legislative involvement after the budget is passed into law that the Supreme Court deems violative of separation of powers. There, the High Court ruled that any post-enactment involvement of the legislature or legislators crosses the strict lines of separation between the branches of government, for while budget enactment is within the province of the Legislature, the approval of the budget and its implementation are Executive functions.
And in respect to the President, the thoughtful posture of the Supreme Court in laying down the Arias doctrine will be recalled. There, the Court said:
"We would be setting a bad precedent if a head of office plagued by all too common problems- dishonest or negligent subordinates, overwork, multiple assignments or positions, or plain incompetence is suddenly swept into a conspiracy conviction simply because he did not personally examine every single detail, painstakingly trace every step from inception, and investigate the motives of every person involved in a transaction before affixing, his signature as the final approving authority."
The President has the right to rely on his subordinate officers, particularly the department secretaries and their subalterns, for the faithful, honest and efficient implementation of the budget. Of course, due diligence is required of the President — and this will include being on the lookout for suspicious entries, particularly trouble-causing insertions — but they certainly cannot demand that he examine the minutiae of each project and its fruition. But even when the budget is on the President's desk awaiting his signature, we can and must make our voices heard, not the shrieks of those who do not know the least thing about such a complex matter as the national budget who merely wish to stir trouble and fan the flames of discontent, but the educated interventions, questions, and interrogatories of those who know of what they speak and write!
If we waive the right to question, to protest and to object now, we shall not be heard to complain later on that the budget was surreptitiously passed and enacted into law in bad faith!
