All is not lost as President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. still has the power to ask the bicameral conference committee to reconvene and fix all the contentious items in the final version of the P6.532 trillion national budget for 2025, Sen. Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri said.
Zubiri pointed this out in an interview on Monday, December 16 expressing his belief that indeed the President can remedy the questionable increases and decreases in some of the agencies’ budgets for next year that has been approved and ratified by the Senate and House of Representatives last week.
The President also has the power to exercise line-item veto in the General Appropriations Bill (GAB), he stressed.
“The President has not yet signed the budget bill, so before it can be received in Malacañang, the President can address Congress, the congressional leaders—both the Senate President and House Speaker—that I want a few things further amended on your bicam (report on the 2025 budget). So ‘please reconstitute the bicam’; he can do that,” Zubiri said during an ambush interview.
Zubiri, who was also former Senate president, said he too was surprised to see a substantial cut on the Department of Education (DepEd) budget for 2025 when under the Constitution, education should have received the highest priority in the country’s annual budget.
“Possibly (there’s violation of the Constitution). That can be taken up by certain groups. It can be questioned,” he said.
“That’s why all is not lost until the President can possibly remedy it through some veto provisions. So let’s see what the President will do. But what’s important is, education should be the top priority based on our Constitution, especially when crafting the national budget,” he said.
Zubiri also reminded his colleagues that the Senate should remain independent as it is the last bastion, “not only of democracy, but also the last bastion of institutional amendments.”
“All departments come to the Senate to appeal when they fail to convince the House over request for additional budget. That’s been the practice for the last 21 budgets that I have attended to,” he said.
“I have already attended 21 budgets, so this is the practice, that when it comes to the Senate, the departments are happy because they get their budget augmented,” he pointed out.
Zubiri said he is just worried that the recent outcome and form of the 2025 GAB would start as a very bad precedent for the Upper Chamber.
“Because we are looking into the welfare and progress of the whole country, not just a single district, a single province. This is for the whole country. So I hope we don’t lose that (independence),” he emphasized.