Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson became more emboldened to fight pork barrel and other anomalies in the budget, after President Marcos stressed in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday that there should be no repeat of the mangling of the 2025 budget.

Lacson, an avowed enemy of the pork barrel system, also cited other positive developments from House Speaker Martin Romualdez and Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman that further fueled his drive to keep the budgeting process transparent and corruption-free.

"I will help because this is something I have been doing for so long. But now I and my staff are more emboldened to go after pork barrel because the President himself said he will not sign a budget bill that does not align with the National Expenditure Program," he said in Filipino in an interview on DZBB radio Tuesday.

In his SONA, the President said he will not sign a budget bill that does not align with the National Expenditure Program (NEP) - even if it means the country will have a reenacted budget for next year.

Aside from the President's pronouncement, Lacson said, Pangandaman had talked to department secretaries and asked them not to approach lawmakers for additional funding in their 2026 budgets.

Lacson noted that when agency heads ask lawmakers for augmentations in their budgets, this emboldens some lawmakers to make their own insertions in the budget bill.

"That's where it starts. A lawmaker would be emboldened to insert items in the budget for his or her district," he said.

On the other hand, Lacson said Romualdez's pronouncements for an "open bicam" should help ensure transparency in the budgeting process.

He said this will jibe with his re-filed bill institutionalizing the participation of non-government organizations and civil society groups in the budgeting process.

"What is good is that I heard the Speaker encouraging transparency in the bicameral conference committee, particularly for the budget. It's the Speaker who said this, and he has great influence in the House. If that is his marching order, I don't think there will be anyone who will openly defy him," he said.

On the other hand, he said that Congress should take its cue from the President regarding anomalies in the government's flood control programs and the national budget.

He stressed this even as he said the President's order to inventory flood control programs to see which are failures and ghost projects, as well as finding anomalous items in the budget bill, may be "tedious but workable".

"The President capped his SONA with a pronouncement that he knows will hit his audience - that's us lawmakers... The pronouncement that those involved in anomalies in the flood control programs and the national budget should be ashamed should cut to the bone. Those who don't feel any shame would simply be bad to the bone," he said.

The President said his inspection of the effects of recent cyclones and the southwest monsoon showed many flood control projects were either failures or ghost projects, likely due to kickbacks and other forms of corruption.

He ordered the listing of all flood control projects in the last three years, and the reporting to the public of failed, unfinished, and alleged ghost projects, with those responsible to be charged.

Lacson gave the President "very high marks" for his SONA, for acknowledging at the start of his address the frustrations of the people as shown in the results of the May 2025 midterm elections; baring his plans for the next three years; and capping his SONA with warnings against anomalies in the budget and in flood control programs.

"As I said, my favorite quote from the SONA was 'Mahiya naman kayo (Be ashamed of yourselves)'," he said.

Lacson said the President's pronouncement may be a chance for lawmakers to explain to their constituents that they can no longer augment funds for their projects, after the President said he will not sign a budget bill that does not fully align with the NEP.

The NEP is the precursor of the national budget.