Electing plunderers to Congress and the budget process

By Michael Henry Yusingco, LL.M

Utilize the AI tool of your choice and ask this question, ‘What law governs the budget process in the Philippines?’ Then as a voter and taxpayer ask yourself this question, ‘Is this right?’ Billions of your hard-earned money are lost to corruption annually in the national budget. Maybe you have not felt this plundering before, but now we all do. The raid on the public coffers is evident in our day-to-day lives. We see it with our own eyes because the plunderers in office are no longer hiding it.

So, the budget process is governed not by a single, comprehensive budget law but by a combination of constitutional provisions, outdated statutes, administrative issuances and auditing rules.  This mix of regulations provide the overarching legal framework for preparing, legislating, implementing and auditing the national budget. Clearly, the absence of an omnibus budget law has created a structural weakness in fiscal governance that has enabled the plundering of the public coffers to go on unabated.

Note that this regulatory flaw exists alongside another defining feature of our politics: the dominance of political dynasties in Congress and in local government. Our fragmented budget system operates within a political environment where political families can exercise sustained influence over government agencies, electoral processes and the distribution of public resources. When these two conditions intersect, the budget becomes an instrument of unmitigated plunder.

A political dynasty can manipulate politics and governance across elections and across different levels of government. A congressional representative may belong to the same political network as a governor, mayor or other local officials. Where political families dominate both legislative and local political institutions, the distinction between public spending and partisan resource allocation can become blurred. Flood-control spending illustrates the danger.

The recent flood-control controversy exposed more than alleged irregularities in individual projects. It raises a broader question about how projects are selected, inserted into the budget, prioritised, contracted and implemented. Where projects can be politically influenced without sufficient transparency concerning their origin, technical justification, cost, contractor and implementation, the budget becomes vulnerable to patronage and rent-seeking.

An omnibus budget law could address some of these vulnerabilities. It could establish uniform rules governing congressional interventions and require full disclosure of who proposed particular changes and the reasons for them. It could impose objective and transparent criteria for geographically identified infrastructure projects.

It could strengthen restrictions on legislative involvement in implementation after enactment. It could require greater disclosure of project proponents, implementing agencies, contractors and beneficiaries. It could also create stronger institutional firewalls between legislators and implementing agencies.

Obviously, an omnibus budget law as illustrated here will be a ‘killing the goose that lays the golden egg’ proposition for lawmakers. Hence, civil society simply cannot wait for them to pursue this landmark reform. Voters and taxpayers need to be very aggressive about pushing for the passage of this urgent legislation. Mass actions and online campaigns must be organized. Enacting it through people’s initiative should also be seriously considered.

Needless to say, such legislation would not eliminate the political dynasty scourge. That requires a separate legislative response in light of Congress’s long-standing failure to enact an effective anti-dynasty law. But budget reform and political-dynasty reform should be understood as connected problems. In this regard, the Dapat Isa Lang group offers a valuable example as it pursues the enactment of this law via people’s initiative.

Voters and taxpayers must bear in mind that abolishing one form of pork barrel is insufficient. As the current budget proposal shows us, the underlying problem may simply migrate into other areas of public expenditure. If the rules remain fragmented and political incentives remain unchanged, pork barrel can reappear under different names and through different institutional mechanisms.

The national budget belongs to the Filipino people. It should not become a mechanism through which political families convert public expenditure into personal wealth and political longevity. Without structural reform, we risk maintaining a system that merely disguises pork barrel. Voters and taxpayers must also internalize the fact that electing plunderers to Congress simply ensures the plunder of the public coffers.