THE bicameral report on this year’s P6.326 trillion national budget which contained blank entries questioned by the camp of former President Rodrigo Duterte was prepared by the technical staff of the Senate Committee on Finance and not by the staff of the House of Representatives, Marikina City Rep. Stella Quimbo told reporters on Tuesday night.
Quimbo, who is the acting chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, said: “So, ang nag-prepare po ay ang Senate technical staff ng Committee on Finance (So the one who prepared the bicam report was the Senate technical staff of the Committee on Finance.”
The Senate finance committee is chaired by Sen. Grace Poe.
Quimbo reiterated that the blanks – which is the subject of a Supreme Court petition filed by Duterte allies Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab and former executive secretary Victor Rodriguez – were only left as such pending final calculations to be made since lawmakers have already agreed on the exact figures during the bicameral meetings.
Named as respondents in the petition were the House of Representatives headed by Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, Senate of the Philippines represented by Senate President Francis Escudero, and Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin.
The petition asked the High Court to declare as unconstitutional Republic Act 12116, or the General Appropriations Act of 2025, which Ungab has said had missing allocations for certain items under the Department of Agriculture (DA) and unprogrammed appropriations in the bicameral report.
The petitioners alleged the respondents committed grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction when they signed the bicameral committee report on the 2025 national budget filled with blank spaces.
The Ungab-Rodriguez petition also questioned the removal of the PhilHealth budget from the 2025 GAA, saying it “would have adverse effects upon the attainment of the Universal Health Care Act’s envisioned health system reforms.”
They also claimed that the 2025 GAA violated Article VI, Section 25 (1) of the Constitution when the respondents realigned the proposed appropriations under the 2024 National Expenditure Program and in effect increased the appropriations for Congress and other line agencies.
Quimbo, who earlier insisted that the 2025 GAA remains legal even if there were adjustments and corrections made in the bicameral level, said the act of filling out the blanks by the Senate staff to make the necessary adjustments was just ministerial.
“We can see that these (adjustments) are based on the Senate committee report, also based on the House’s General Appropriations Bill (HGAB). Actually, you will also see some of the figures in other portions of the bicam report itself, as well as bicam discussions,” she said.
Quimbo was senior vice chair of the House appropriations panel that deliberated on the 2025 budget and was one of the members of the House contingent to the bicameral meetings with senators.
She was recently named the panel’s acting chair following the resignation of Rep. Zaldy Co (PL, Ako Bicol), who said he needed to focus on his health.
Quimbo said it was also spelled out in the provisions of the bicameral report that in case there are discrepancies between the report and the printed version of the General Appropriations Bill (GAB), the printed version will be followed.
“So, as I said yesterday (Monday), there are two omnibus provisions in our bicam report, and one of these states that in case of conflict between the bicam report and the printed version of the bill, the latter will prevail, which happened in this case because the bicam report had blanks and then the printed bill had figures. So, in that case, the printed bill prevails under the omnibus provision,” she explained.
Quimbo last Monday said the bicameral report “explicitly authorized the technical secretariats of both the Senate and the House of Representatives to implement corrections and adjustments as required.”
She said the changes do not affect the integrity or the legality of the budget bill because all appropriations had already been determined and approved and no changes were made after the members of the bicameral committee signed the report.
In a separate interview, Ungab took exception to the claim of La Union Rep. Paolo Ortega V that their group filed the SC petition “out of political survival.”
Ungab, who was himself a former chair of the appropriations panel, said: “He (Ortega) doesn’t know me, and I have been in Congress for 15 years, this is my last term. No one is running for a presidential post for us to play politics.”
“I will not run for the Senate, I will try to be a congressman again, for re-election only. And also, I don’t deal with that kind of diversions,” said the Davao City lawmaker.
Ungab said the reason why he made noise and divulged the alleged unconstitutionality of the GAA is “patriotism” because “that patriotism and idealism in me as a UP (University of the Philippines) student has not died even up to now. I’m sorry, but I don’t deal with that kind of questions, it’s not politics.”
President Marcos Jr. last week said Duterte was lying about the alleged missing or blank allocations in the GAA, stressing that a spending measure with blank spaces has never happened in the country’s history and was never practiced by the government.
