The enrolled budget bill for 2026 is scheduled to be signed into law next Monday.
No other document will be as indicative of where we are going as a nation in this crucial juncture as the budget bill. When finally signed into law, it is guaranteed to cause disappointment across many sectors.
While transparency was promised in the crafting of the budget’s final form, this did not ensure participation. When the final bill went up for ratification at the House of Representatives, the microphones were turned off. Watchdog groups could look but not speak. Ratification was achieved the usual way: through the distribution of fat Christmas checks for the legislators.
The possibility that President Marcos Jr. will refuse to sign the bill and return it to Congress is almost nil. A reenactment of the 2025 national budget – the most corrupt budget in our history – will certainly be disastrous. The political fallout from reenactment cannot possibly be contained.
A bigger possibility is that the President will use his potent line-item veto power to take out some of the most objectionable features of the enrolled bill. Legislators expressed hopes the budget document will suffer no vetos. Whoever advises the President will surely push for a few line-item vetoes if only for political showmanship: to demonstrate the Chief Executive still has leverage in the budget process.
Marcos Jr. did promise that he would veto items that are not aligned with the priorities set out in the National Expenditure Program (NEP). So many items in the enrolled bill are clearly not aligned with administration priorities, including those items Sen. Imee Marcos in her characteristically colorful language described as ‘pork giniling.’
A year before, we recall, Marcos Jr. vetoed a few items in the notoriously mangled 2025 budget bill (after professing to have gone through the voluminous document page by page). This did not cure the glaring defects in the document. He remained complicit in committing to law the most corrupt budget in our history.
Weeks before, some senators boldly declared they will not pass a budget loaded with unprogrammed allocations. The final version actually increased unprogrammed funds by the tens of billions.
We will likely see the budget bill suffer only minor line-item vetoes – if only because opting for a reenacted budget will be such a disaster. Congress is playing a game of chicken with the President. The overwhelming probability is that the President will chicken out.
In a parliamentary system, Marcos Jr. may turn his predicament into a bold political opportunity by dismissing the legislature and calling for new elections. He cannot do that in the present constitutional setup. The legislative branch has him by the neck.
If push comes to shove, the congressmen may simply allow an impeachment complaint against the President to prosper. Even if nothing comes out of such a move, it will surely trap the sitting President, already beleaguered by the corruption crisis, into irredeemable lame duck status.
After next Monday’s ceremonious budget signing, Marcos Jr. quickly transitions into becoming a lame duck. His political capital has been expended. He wallows in poor performance and trust ratings. He does not have the will, the work ethic, the statesmanly skills nor the vision to substantially change the nation’s course.
He will be engrossed with only one thing: politically surviving until the end of his constitutionally defined term. He will not even have the endorsement power to help define his successor and keep his supporters in line. He calculates correctly that certifying as urgent the reform measures pirated from the opposition could only result in yet another political defeat.
A lame duck president by definition is one who has lost his handle on the swirl of events and the political outcomes that define our future. He will simply be carried by the tide. All the devils will come out to play. Dark money – from corrupt politicians, drug dealers and gambling lords – will overrun an electoral terrain made defenseless by a weak political party system.
When put in its necessary context, the budget bill will figure even more starkly as a failure in governance.
We have an educational system that is degraded on all counts. Our agriculture is in a quagmire, increasingly unable to feed our own people, let alone become an export juggernaut. Over time, our national accounts will be even deeper in the red – stifling our ability to reduce poverty, let alone grow at a reassuring pace.
Our revenue agencies are shot through with corruption. If our national treasury was a credit card, we are nearly at our limits. Our partner multilateral institutions will police their lending to us even more tightly because of the corruption scandal. Each day, a crippling debt crisis looms a larger possibility.
More important, our people are less and less convinced the nation is competently led. This reflects in the collapsing approval and trust ratings. The political class has lost credibility. The stage is set for a sharp rise in popular yearning for a man on horseback: a leader who comes with bold solutions rather than useless chatter.
Given this context, the 2026 budget document is a limp one. It offers more of the same miserable road forward.
The 2016 national budget will not begin to reshape the challenges we confront. It is long on horse-trading and short on patriotic fire.