Allowing the Office of the President (OP) to leave the House appropriations committee unscathed during its annual budget deliberations has been observed for many administrations, and it’s no different this year, or since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was elected president in 2022.

But when the House finally disregarded the time-honored tradition of granting parliamentary courtesy to Sara Duterte’s Office of the Vice President during the committee-level budget deliberations on August 27 and September 10, some observers online and offline began to voice out — why not give the same treatment to the OP for the sake of fairness?

That did not happen, as Marcos’ office swiftly secured the appropriations panel’s nod on September 9.

In turn, we at Rappler held a community chat event on our app on September 19, inviting former congresswoman Liza Maza, budget expert Zy-za Suzara, Council for People’s Development and Governance board member Fives Valdez, and iDefend’s Rose Trajano to discuss the burning questions that lawmakers should ask the OP once the budget is deliberated in the House plenary.

1. How does the OP justify the release of billions of pesos in confidential and intelligence funds to Marcos’ office?

The confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) of the OP used to be less than a billion pesos combined per year, but the amount began to constantly hit seven figures under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, and the practice continued during the administration of his successor Marcos.

For 2025, OP is seeking P2.25 billion in confidential funds and P2.31 billion in intelligence funds, similar to what it got for the current year. Combined, it represents almost half of the total funding request of Marcos’ office.

“The CIF budget of the Office of the President is even bigger than the CIF of the security sector. It seems that the President is fortifying himself,” Maza said.

In comparison, the Department of National Defense wants P1.8 billion in CIF for next year while the Department of the Interior and Local Government is seeking P906.6 million.

“OP is not an intelligence-gathering office. That’s the job of security agencies. Historically, the CIF of the president is not worth billions of pesos,” Suzara added.

Why does Marcos need to follow the footsteps of his predecessor Duterte and request billions of pesos in difficult-to-audit funds every year? Yes, these funds are confidential in nature, but how has the security landscape of the country changed in the past decade to warrant such a huge secret funding allocation to the OP?

2. What has the President done with the contingent funds and unprogrammed appropriations?

Thought leaders from Rappler’s recent community chat call them the new form of “pork” — contingent funds and unprogrammed appropriations.

Contingent funds exist with the purpose of covering funding requirements of new and urgent activities of the national government. Agencies file a request to tap into these funds, and the OP ultimately has to approve the request, before the Department of Budget and Management releases the funds.

The confidential funds of Vice President Duterte in 2022 came from the contingent funds of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) as the OVP’s budget document was prepared by her predecessor Leni Robredo who did not request confidential funds.

It was Marcos’ office that approved the release of confidential funds to the OVP, a move that opposition lawmakers flagged due to the secrecy surrounding the nature of the fund itself, as well as its release.

Critics said the existence of contingent funds does not grant the President unlimited authority to allocate the money just for any purpose, because the GAA was clear that the release of such funds is meant for specific extraordinary cases.

For 2025, the executive branch is proposing to Congress contingent funds worth P13 billion, similar to what the administration received for the current fiscal year.

Unprogrammed appropriations, meanwhile, are standby funds that the government can tap into when unanticipated situations arise. It’s not a new concept in the GAA, and it can be tapped when sources of revenue in the budget exceed their collections target.

It is at the center of numerous Supreme Court challenges, though.

Albay 1st District Representative Edcel Lagman flagged Congress’ approval of unprogrammed appropriations for 2024 worth P731.45 billion, even though the executive branch only proposed P281.91 billion.

Senate Minority Leader Koko Pimentel also questioned the provision in the 2024 GAA that allowed the government to tap P89.9 billion in unutilized funds from state health insurer PhilHealth, a government-owned and -controlled corporation (GOCC), to fund unprogrammed appropriations.

Suzara pointed out: “Unprogrammed appropriations cannot be readily used like the contingent fund because it is subject to certain conditions. Unless those conditions are met, the UA cannot be used. That is no longer the case in the 2024 unprogrammed appropriations because the bicameral conference committee added GOCC funds.”

.”Long story short, as long as they manage to sweep GOCC funds, they can use the unprogrammed appropriations for just about anything,” she added.

Maza noted that the Supreme Court had ruled in 2013 that the pork barrel fund is illegal. “Now it is resurrecting in the form of unprogrammed appropriations and also hidden in programmed appropriations,” she said,

Rappler’s thought leaders are pushing for more transparency with regard to such discretionary funds.

“A suggested action [is for Congress to compel the Commission on Audit to] submit audit reports on the contingent funds and unprogrammed appropriations, and CIF of the OP. As a relatively new pork phenomenon, we have to put this on people’s radar, and develop a way of preventing corruption,” Valdez said.

3. Does he really need to travel often?

Marcos is asking P1.054 billion for 2025 for his traveling expenses, slightly lower than this year’s appropriations of P1.148 billion.

That is expected, given that 2025 will be an election year, and the President has fewer opportunities to go abroad as he dedicates his time to campaigning for his senatorial candidates here at home.

But a billion pesos for foreign and domestic trips is still a huge amount of money, and critics have questioned in the past whether these overseas visits really result in more investment opportunities.

Despite constant press releases by the administration on investment pledges it has secured during Marcos’ foreign trips, actual foreign direct investments dropped by 14.7% from the first half of 2022 to the first half of 2023. Latest numbers from the central bank, however, show some promise, with a growth of 7.9% for the first half of 2024.

In Valdez’s view, the President’s agenda for travel include efforts to boost the optics that the Philippines under his leadership is pro-human rights, and to forge economic agreements “that only perpetuate the already unequal trade relations with the Global North.”

“Even when you say investments are coming in, why is the economy not improving? Because the paradigm that it follows only perpetuates the current system,” Valdez argued.

What to expect

Opposition lawmakers have long called to set aside the practice of giving the OP and the OVP free passes during committee-level budget briefings, as these are the only times that the public can watch the heads of agencies (in this case, the President or the Executive Secretary, and the Vice President) defend their budget requests straight from their mouths.

Rappler’s thought leaders asserted that Congress should not be selective when it comes to scrutinizing the budgets of government offices.

“Accountability and transparency should be applied to all agencies especially with the Offices of the President and Vice President,” Trajano of iDefend said.

The OP budget will be deliberated in the House plenary on September 25, but lawmakers sponsoring the office’s funding request will be the ones standing behind the rostrum to defend the proposal.

Last year’s debates lasted almost three hours before the budget secured the plenary’s approval. – Rappler.com