Red flags on election budget for 2027

It was no walk in the park for “acting” Secretary Kim Robert de Leon of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) at his maiden appearance in a congressional public hearing last Monday. De Leon, accompanied by other members of the economic Cabinet of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM), was grilled in the first of a series of public hearings on the proposed 2027 General Appropriations Act (GAA) bill submitted to the 20th Congress by Malacañang Palace last week.

Under our country’s Constitution, the House of Representatives gets the first crack at scrutinizing the annual budget proposal of the national government. As the head of the DBM, De Leon briefed the House committee on appropriations on the key features of the P7.2-trillion budget for next year that PBBM endorsed to the 20th Congress for approval.

The proposed 2027 GAA bill will be the acid test for De Leon after PBBM appointed him as “acting” DBM secretary on May 18. At age 32 years, Malacañang billed De Leon as the youngest Cabinet member of PBBM and the youngest secretary as well in the history of the DBM.

Prior to his return to the DBM, he served as an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman National College of Public Administration and Governance (UP-NCPAG). He also once served as Department of Transportation (DOTr) undersecretary for administration and finance from July 2022 to January 2024.

On De Leon’s first sitting at the House appropriations committee hearing, minority bloc member Rep. Elijah San Fernando quizzed him on the DBM’s “press release” that described the agency’s acronym as “Dapat Budget Makatao.” San Fernando asked why De Leon – a “product of state scholars” at UP – apparently allowed state universities and colleges (SUCs) to suffer cuts in their 2027 budget bill.

Also a graduate of an SUC – from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines – the 30-year-old San Fernando ran and won in last year’s May mid-term elections as Kamanggagawa Party-list representative. Aside from SUCs, the neophyte lawmaker complained about the huge cuts in the 2027 budgets of the public health, education and agriculture sectors but the defense department enjoyed a hefty increase.

Actually, De Leon is no stranger at the DBM. He previously served as undersecretary who led the Organization and Systems Improvement and ICT Groups of the agency from September 2021 to July 2022.

So the “acting” DBM secretary is a typical bureaucrat and technocrat combined.

Offhand, De Leon expressed his full support for the initial budget reforms instituted by lawmakers in the aftermath of the “ghost” flood control scandal that rocked the core of the defunct 19th Congress. In particular, De Leon cited the opening to public scrutiny of the proceedings at the bicameral conference committee (bicam) on the annual budget bill. Known as the so-called “third Congress,” the bicam is composed of equal numbers of senators and House members who would reconcile the differing versions of the annual budget bill separately approved in plenary by the Senate and the Lower House.

The bicam is co-chaired by the respective chairpersons of the Senate finance committee and the House appropriations committee. Previously conducted behind closed doors by the lawmakers, De Leon welcomed public access to the bicam proceedings on the budget bill via livestreaming. De Leon believes opening the bicam proceedings to the public would promote a “more transparent, accountable and participatory budget process.”

A veteran bureaucrat and technocrat like De Leon, former Department of Budget and Management (DBM) secretary Benjamin Diokno, however, is un-impressed though on the supposed livestreaming of the bicam. Currently Monetary Board member at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Diokno served as DBM secretary to no less than three past presidents of the country.

Diokno expressed skepticism about the livestreaming of last year’s bicam in the approval of the 2026 budget bill. He noted with dismay the online proceedings got suspended and lawmakers just huddled among themselves whenever there were disagreeing provisions.

Thus, Diokno echoed public suspicions these were being negotiated and agreements reached off-line and not heard by the people but found its way into the final version of the 2026 GAA. Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian, who chaired last year the Senate finance committee, vowed to continue the livestreaming of the budget bicam as agreed with Speaker Faustino Dy III.

Diokno credited the sincerity and earnest desire of Senator Gatchalian in implementing this budget reform. In fact, he disclosed, Gatchalian sought him out for consultations to keep above board the congressional scrutiny of the budget bill. Now as Senate President, Gatchalian turned over the reins of the Senate finance committee to Sen. JV Ejercito, who was elected to chair this counterpart body of the House appropriations committee in charge of shepherding through Congress the passage into law of the annual GAA bill.

A number of former and incumbent lawmakers are now facing corruption charges before the ombudsman, the Department of Justice and at Sandiganbayan. Both former Senate president Francis “Chiz” Escudero and speaker Martin Romualdez lost their respective leaderships in the aftermath of the flood control scam in the “mangled” 2025 GAA approved by the defunct 19th Congress. A notorious election budget signed into law by PBBM, it triggered the “Trillion Peso March” in September last year as the offshoot of the “ghost” flood control scandal.

Diokno warned the proposed 2027 GAA might become yet another “election budget” that will be approved a year before the holding of the next presidential elections in May 2028. Diokno reminded Congress on the constitutional rule barring them from increasing the budget proposed by the President.

“The record is not encouraging. In 2024, 2025 and 2026, Congress rewrote the President’s budget so extensively that the discipline imposed by that rule was weakened,” he cited.

This early, Diokno raised “red flags” in the 2027 GAA bill that the public must watch out for. Clue: huge increases in any item, especially ayuda, in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), known as “The President’s Budget.”