THE Supreme Court yesterday said it will conduct oral argu-ments in April on the petition filed by former Executive Secre-tary and now senatorial aspirant Victor Rodriguez and Davao City 3rd District Rep. Isidro Ungab questioning the constitu-tionality of Republic Act 12116 or the General Appropriations Act of 2025.
Joining Rodriguez and Ungab in the “taxpayer’s suit” are Ro-gelio Mendoza, Benito Ching, Redemberto Villanueva, Roseller dela Peña, Santos Catuba and Dominic Solis.
The decision to hold the proceedings was reached yesterday during the high court’s en banc session.
“The SC set the oral arguments for this case on April 1, 2025, Tuesday, 2 p.m. at the En Banc Session Hall, SC Baguio Com-pound, Baguio City. The preliminary conference will be held on February 28 at the En Banc Session Hall, SC Main Building, Manila,” the court said.
The petitioners argued that RA 12116 is unconstitutional for vi-olating Article II Section 15 of the 1987 Constitution in relation to Sections 10, 11 and 37 of Republic Act No. 1123, also known as the Universal Health Care Act.
“A simple perusal of the 2025 GAA would show that not a sin-gle centavo was earmarked and appropriated for PhilHealth. Quite perplexingly, the respondents justified the non-inclusion of PhilHealth in view of the more or less P600 billion reserve funds which comprises its surplus and funds placed in invest-ments,” the petitioners said.
PHILHEALTH BUDGET
“From the foregoing, it is not hard to fathom that the removal of the PhilHealth budget from the 2025 GAA would have adverse effects upon the attainment of the Universal Health Care Act’s envisioned health system reforms,” they added.
They also said the 2025 GAA violated Article VI, Section 25 (1) of the Constitution when the respondents realigned the pro-posed appropriations under the 2024 National Expenditure Pro-gram, which, they stressed, in effect increased the proposed budget appropriations for Congress and other line agencies.
Likewise, the petitioners said the 2025 GAA violated Article XIV, Section 5 (5) of the Constitution as the budget appropria-tions for the education sector were merely bloated to give the impression of a “superficial adherence to the constitutional mandate” to assign the highest budgetary priority to education.
They noted the appropriations included funding for the Philip-pine Military Academy, the Philippine National Police Acade-my, and the National Defense College which were previously under the budgets of the Department of National Defense and the Department of the Interior and Local Government.
They added that the budget for the Local Government Acade-my, Philippine Public Safety College, Philippine Science High School System and the Science Education Institute were also lumped together with the education budget.
“In effect, the 2025 GAA was carefully crafted to superficially adhere to the mandate of the 1987 Constitution that the State shall assign the highest budgetary priority to the education sec-tor,” the petitioners further said.
The petitioners alleged the 2025 GAA violated Article VI, Sec-tion 27 of the Constitution when the Bicameral Conference Committee submitted a report with blank items on the GAA Bill.
CONGRESS BUDGET
They also assailed the constitutionality of the increase in the budget of the House and the Senate as they noted that the pro-posed budget for the House under the 2025 National Expendi-ture Program amounted to P16.35 billion.
However, the proposed budget for the House under the General Appropriations Bill which was approved by the President, and which led to the passage of RA 12116, amounted to P33.67 bil-lion.
As to the Senate, its original proposed budget allocation was 12.83 billion but it was eventually increased to P13.93 billion in the 2025 GAA.
“Equally questionable is the fact that, notwithstanding said increase, the President failed to exercise his veto power over the budget appropriations for Congress,” they added. “It is beyond cavil that a blatant increase in the budget of the Congress at that, undertaken by Congress itself is vio-lative of the constitutional mandate.”
