The President’s budget

There was nothing new in the “leadership funds” revelations of former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) secretary Manuel Bonoan. Testifying before the Sandiganbayan last week, Bonoan merely cited anew his previous sworn testimony at the Senate Blue Ribbon (SBR) committee hearing on the alleged “ghost” flood control projects.

Bonoan reiterated his SBR admission as one of the co-accused in the alleged “ghost” flood control scandal in Bulacan now undergoing trial in the anti-graft court. He first bared to the SBR the so-called “leadership funds” that were introduced during his watch at the DPWH. One of the original Cabinet members of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM), Bonoan admitted the term “leadership funds” was adopted and internally known only to the agency in the preparation of its annual budget allocations.

Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who then chaired the SBR, validated that Bonoan indeed mentioned “leadership funds” as early as September last year during their public hearings on the alleged “ghost” flood control projects. Lacson remembered the late DPWH Undersecretary Ma. Catalina Cabral subsequently corroborated at her own sworn testimony at the SBR that these “leadership funds” were recorded in specific allocations to the senators and members of the 19th Congress.

As it turned out, Lacson learned it simply referred to the “allocables” set aside in the DPWH budget. Hence, he quipped, they were just another form of “pork barrel” allocations. Lacson also recalled then Senate president Vicente “Tito” Sotto III narrated his own experience of being offered by Cabral so-called “allocable” budget for DPWH projects. Cabral supposedly made the offer to Sotto who, along with Lacson, were returning to the Senate after the May 2025 mid-term elections.

However, these “leadership funds” in the DPWH budget were not and could not be seen in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) submissions to the defunct 19th Congress. But these special allocations in the GAAs in 2023, 2024 and 2025 passed and got through Congress.

Bonoan told the court the DPWH created these “leadership funds” after PBBM raised serious concerns over massive cuts in the 2023 DPWH budget and the insertion of thousands in the number of flood control-related projects in the names of lawmakers.

Although the Sandiganbayan initially refused to accept his offer to turn state witness, Bonoan gave his testimonies on how the congressional insertions “mangled” the GAAs. Obviously, it was meant to go around the Supreme Court (SC) ruling that disallowed “pork-barrel” funds in the guise of special allocations in the GAA. The SC ruled that only line item budgets, or funds directly under specific government agencies, are allowed in the GAA. Hence, these “leadership funds” were inconspicuously but directly included in the line items of the DPWH flood control program.

As approved by Congress, Bonoan noted an increase of P175.81 billion in the DPWH budget. But there were significant changes to the programs and projects originally proposed by the agency, he pointed out. Upon DPWH scrutiny, they found the agency’s approved budget was literally flooded with 8,075 new projects of congressional insertions in their 2023 GAA.

PBBM sparingly exercised his line-item veto power to remove identified congressional insertions.

Much of the reductions came from foreign-assisted projects (FAPs) under the 2023 National Expenditure Program (NEP) that were transferred elsewhere, he rued. These were realigned to the pet projects of lawmakers instead, the bulk of which found its way to the DPWH flood control program. In 2022, the proposed budget of P52.770 billion for FAPs in the NEP was cut to P7.449 billion, or an 85.59 percent reduction in the GAA.

Bonoan justified allocating the “Senate leadership fund” and a separate similar system for the members of the House of Representatives. Having bigger number of members than the 24 senators, the House allocation was given a baseline infrastructure allocation of P500 million, computed through a parametric formula for each congressional district.

For House party-list lawmakers, they were allocated P120 million each in fiscal years 2023 and 2024, and the amount increased to P150 million for their priority projects. And since it was an election year in 2025, the DPWH got the biggest chunk of the approved 2025 GAA.

Bonoan recalled in his judicial affidavit to the Sandiganbayan that he reported these changes to PBBM. “The President was alarmed at the reduction of budgets for major items and the inclusion of new items to the detriment of the original programs proposed for the department,” Bonoan stated in his affidavit. In reaction to his report, PBBM purportedly told him that “this cannot go on” because the changes could derail the administration’s socio-economic agenda and infrastructure program.

Thus, it came to a boiling point. “Mahiya naman kayo,” PBBM boomed in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) in July last year. It was his goodbye message to the leaders and members of the outgoing 19th Congress, a number of whom are now facing corruption charges before the ombudsman, the Department of Justice, and the Sandiganbayan. Both former Senate president Francis “Chiz” Escudero and speaker Martin Romualdez lost their respective leaderships in the aftermath of the flood control scam.

Bonoan’s testimony came out a day after PBBM submitted to the 20th Congress the proposed P7.2-trillion budget for next year.

Officially known as the NEP, it is simply called “The President’s Budget,” former Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Benjamin Diokno pointed out in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum last Wednesday.

Diokno should know that very well. After all, he served three past presidents of the country as DBM secretary. He is currently Monetary Board member at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

“All Cabinet members must operate within ‘The President’s Budget.’ So Cabinet members must not lobby with Congress for higher budget because it is a zero-sum game. Whatever higher budget a Cabinet official gets, means a reduction of another department’s budget,” Diokno pointed out.

“So if any Cabinet member cannot comply with that budget, he or she can be fired, or must resign,” Diokno dared.

Without question, it’s because it’s “The President’s Budget,” stupid.