Lawmakers to ask Supreme Court to strike standby fund in 2026 budget

By Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio, Reporter

Minority congressmen plan to file a petition seeking to strike out all unprogrammed appropriations (UA) in this year’s P6.793-trillion national budget, according to an advisory issued on Wednesday.

House Senior Deputy Minority Leader and Caloocan Rep. Edgar R. Erice and Party-list Rep. Leila M. de Lima will submit a petition before the Supreme Court on Thursday, challenging the legality of the inclusion of standby funding in the 2026 budget law, based on a media advisory sent to reporters.

“The petition assails the inclusion of unprogrammed appropriations in the 2026 national budget, citing violations of constitutional principles on public finance, budget accountability and congressional power of the purse,” it said.

According to a copy of the petition, obtained by BusinessWorld, the lawmakers said that UAs are unconstitutional as it allows the government to “spend beyond its declared means under the guise of ‘excess revenue.’”

Mr. Erice and Ms. De Lima, in the prefatory statement, explained this opposes the Constitution which requires that the General Appropriations Bill be based on a budget of expenditures and sources of financing.

“A budget that authorizes expenditures without existing and identifiable sources of financing is not a budget in the constitutional sense,” the lawmakers said.

“It is a conditional permission to spend, the activation of which is left entirely to Executive discretion. This is precisely what the Constitution was designed to prevent.”

Malacañang had earlier said it is confident the 2026 budget could withstand legal scrutiny, adding that it respects the right of the lawmakers to file a petition against the spending plan’s UAs.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. signed the 2026 budget law on Monday, vetoing around P92.5 billion from the over P200 billion in standby funding proposed by Congress. This brings the reserve funds to P150.5 billion, which Mr. Marcos has said was the lowest since 2019. Critics have said that UAs have been historically prone to corruption.

UA are standby funds that can only be used for certain projects that may be charged against excess or windfall revenues to fund specific programs and projects.

The looming legal challenge follows the closer-than-usual scrutiny of this year’s budgeting process, driven by public calls for greater transparency amid repeated concerns over alleged insertions to questionable projects.

Last year’s budget law also faced a similar challenge, as several petitioners sought to question the spending plan’s constitutionality over allegations of tampering after it had been ratified by Congress.

CONGRESS OVERSIGHT

Also on Wednesday, Party-list Rep. Terry L. Ridon, who heads the House Public Accounts Committee, said the Budget department should disclose to the public if the government has excess revenues to allow closer monitoring of UA spending.

“There was a bit of opacity in the previous use of unprogrammed appropriations,” he told a media briefing in mixed English and Filipino.

“You have to be transparent firstly on whether or not excess revenue exists,” Mr. Ridon said. “Also, you have to be transparent on whether they will have to borrow to fund these particular projects.”

His statement comes after he pledged to exercise greater oversight over state spending, which would include the monitoring of public bidding and project implementation to cut down on wasteful spending and corruption.

The Senate and House of Representatives have agreed to convene a joint oversight panel, tasked to safeguard government spending.

Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian said they will create the committee when sessions resume on Jan. 26.

“Once we convene by Jan. 26, we will manifest the members of the on the plenary floor and the creation of the oversight committee, but we still have a lot of preparatory work,” Mr. Gatchalian told a news briefing in mixed Filipino and English.

The Finance chair added that the Senate is still looking to coordinate with the lower chamber on potential topics to be tackled by the oversight committee.

“Even though we have not yet convened, we are doing a lot of the research and coordination with agencies so that once session starts, we can already begin,” Mr. Gatchalian said.

The joint congressional panel is expected to handle the monitoring of government expenditures and the compliance of agencies with the 2026 General Appropriations Act.

“The budget deliberations are already finished. We are now in the implementation stage. It is the implementation that must now be monitored,” he said.

The panel will be led by the Finance heads of both chambers, acting as co-chairs.

“We will look at several items. Number one, utilization of agencies and underutilization because that is a perennial disease of agencies,” he added.

The senator noted that the oversight body will examine how projects are incorporated into the National Expenditure Program and assess whether projects proposed by local government units and communities are being observed.

“That’s important so we can see if the process of obtaining local projects all the way to national is being followed,” Mr. Gatchalian said.

He added that the joint oversight panel has not been implemented in previous years, despite its inclusion in the General Appropriations Act.

“Actually, this is not new. It’s under the General Appropriations Act. It has never been created so we will create it in the next few days,” he said. — with Adrian H. Halili