Isn’t that like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? People might ask of the belated timing of the recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down key provisions in the 2024, 2025, and 2026 national budgets.
With the budget of previous years spent by now, a high court official admitted that there’s no way that taxpayers would get back the billions in disputed fund increases from the three years covered by the ruling.
In the decision penned by Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the high court deemed ‘unconstitutional’ the entire 2024 General Appropriations Act (GAA) because Congress had increased unprogrammed appropriations by P449.5 billion, thus bloating the President’s budget beyond the amount submitted in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), from P281.9 billion in the NEP to P731.4 billion in the GAA.
The 2025 GAA was nullified over the P17.99-billion increase in the Department of Public Works and Highways’ Special Road Fund, that again exceeded the President’s recommended appropriations. The high court meanwhile permanently prohibited the implementation of several Special Provisions in the 2026 GAA that govern the release of unprogrammed appropriations.
Inherently unconstitutional
It also invalidated P12.75 billion in increases to certain agencies’ Special Accounts in the General Fund for violating the Administrative Code, which prohibits increasing the amounts in special provisions beyond those proposed by the President. The ruling stemmed from petitions challenging the 2024 budget’s expanded standby spending authority, and related provisions in subsequent national budgets.
Briefly, the ruling stressed that while unprogrammed appropriations are not inherently unconstitutional and serve as standby funds for unforeseen funding needs, they must remain within narrow constitutional limits, must not be used to circumvent spending restrictions, and must not include lump sum appropriations. These funds may be tapped when specified conditions are met, including the availability of additional government revenues.
While the court applied the ‘operative fact doctrine’ to the 2024 and 2025 budgets, preserving irreversible programs whose beneficiaries acted in good faith despite their constitutional defects, its ruling does not automatically absolve those who authored, proposed, or implemented the questionable appropriations from criminal, civil, or administrative liability.
Personal entitlement
The ruling has not been entirely welcomed by the administration which plans to challenge it based on the vaunted separation of powers between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government. Still, there’s no denying that the court has demonstrated practicable insights and suggestions to put in place transparency and accountability in the often opaque budgeting process.
The ruling cited specific guardrails to ensure that, moving forward, fiscal discipline, restraint, and responsibility are exercised in handling public funds.
Even the timing of the ruling-long overdue by most standards-‘couldn’t have come at a better time,’ Sen. Panfilo Lacson said, pointing out that the House version of the 2027 general appropriations bill is currently undergoing scrutiny by the Senate. The ruling’s legal precepts can certainly prove helpful.
Just as welcome is how the ruling called out lawmakers for treating taxpayer money as personal entitlement that allowed them to insert outrageous unprogrammed funds regardless of what had been originally proposed by the President himself.
Also questioned were special funds to some government programs that could lead to pork-style patronage ahead of the 2028 elections. Included here is the Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure and Social Programs, which accounted for about 30 percent of unprogrammed funds in the 2024 and 2025 budgets.
Concrete steps
More than providing concrete steps on transparency and fiscal restraint, the ruling should also prompt closer scrutiny of projects that the watchdog People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) said were inserted by the House into the proposed 2027 budget of the Department of Agriculture.
‘The House inserted 7,054 projects worth P190 billion, deleted 1,881 projects worth P93 billion, increased 258 projects worth P7.5 billion, and decreased 277 projects worth P91 billion,’ PBC co-convenor Kenneth Abante said.
Aside from potentially inflated project costs, the PBC expressed concern about several farm to market roads whose project coordinates allegedly point to bodies of water rather than their identified locations in Nueva Ecija, Cebu, and Quezon.
The ruling thus sets the stage for a more inclusive, consultative, and participatory relationship between government and the public it serves, in this case, the much put-upon taxpayer. As the court ruling stated, ‘Every peso collected in taxes and fees represents labor rendered, needs deferred, perseverance, and sacrifice endured by our people. The General Appropriations Act must honor that sacrifice.’