Senator Imee Marcos on Tuesday, December 24 urged the Marcos administration to slash the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) budget by P188 billion to make the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) aligned with the Constitution.
Marcos believes the administration needs to decide on this before the scheduled signing of the 2025 GAA on December 30.
Under Article 14 Section 5 of the Constitution, the government must “assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment.”
But the bicameral conference committee approved an allocation of P1.1 trillion for the DPWH, as opposed to the Department of Education (DepEd) that will receive only P737 billion.
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has vowed to thoroughly study next year’s proposed budget before signing the P6.3 trillion budget.
“Unless they have a different way of computing budgetary allocations for education, dapat tapyasan nila ng at least 188B ang Public Works para hindi ma-violate ang constitution (they should at least slash the budget of the DPWH by at least P188 billion so the Constitution won’t be violated),” Marcos said.
“So there may be at least P188 billion worth of rewards sa unprogrammed appropriations for the ‘All Ye Faithful’,” she added.
Moreover, the senator said that if her brother, President Marcos, does a line item veto just like he wanted to do, he cannot use the vetoed items to fund or augment other items in the budget.
“They will have less projects to fund which may translate to a deficit lower than what was originally programmed, which may be a good or maybe bad thing, depending on who’s counting,” she said.
She also pointed out the Unprogrammed Funds can only be released if there is excess income or if there are new sources of funds not included in the Budget of Expenditures and Sources of Financing (BESF).
“If foreign assisted projects, only the loan proceeds component of the project can be released to the extent of the loan already with us as certified by the Bureau of Treasury,” she said.