PBBM: Govt will shut down if SC voids2025 budget

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PRESIDENT Marcos Jr. yesterday said the administration does not have any contingency plan in place and warned that the national government will “shut down” if the Supreme Court (SC) nullifies the 2025 national budget and declare it as unconstitutional.

The President, in an ambush interview on the sidelines of the inauguration of the Mactan-Cebu-International Airport parallel runway, said that once the government stops working, its detractors can proceed with their destabilization efforts.

“No, we shut down everything. I guess that’s what they want. They want the government to cease working so matuloy iyong kanilang mga destabilization na ginagawa (No, we shut down everything. I guess that’s what they want. They want the government to cease working so they can proceed with their destabilization efforts),” Marcos said when asked if the government has prepared a contingency plan in case the SC grants the petition filed by Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab and former executive secretary Victor Rodriguez.

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Ungab and Rodriguez on Wednesday asked the High Court to nullify the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) and declare it as unconstitutional because it was supposedly based on a signed bicameral conference committee report that had several blank provisions, among other arguments.

Marcos, however, expressed confidence that the 2025 GAA is on “solid footing in terms of constitutionality.”

The President said the Office of the Solicitor General (SolGen) will answer the complaint and represent the national government.

“I don’t know why they bothered to file that (SC petition) because their assertion is difficult. Well, anyway, it’s not for me to make the argument. We will let the SolGen make the argument before the Supreme Court. We are very confident that our case is strong,” Marcos said.

Earlier on Thursday, the President insisted that the GAA that he signed did not have blank spaces even as he committed to “keep looking” for the missing appropriations being complained by his critics.

The President, during the 20th National Convention of Lawyers of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in Cebu City, said he had thoroughly reviewed and analyzed the 4,057-page spending measure and found no blank items as alleged by Ungab and Rodriguez.

“I reviewed it, analyzed it, and yes, in parts, vetoed it… Up to now, I cannot find those damned blank items. We’ll keep looking, we’ll keep looking. But I don’t – I really – I’m convinced that they simply do not exist because it is not allowed to exist,” Marcos said.

Ungab had claimed that the bicameral committee report on the 2025 budget contained blank spaces when this was presented to lawmakers for ratification. The blanks, he alleged, were filled out before the enrolled bill was submitted to Malacañang for signing.

The President and Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin have earlier denied Ungab’s allegation, which was later echoed by former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Lawmakers who joined the bicameral discussions on the 2025 national budget have also denied the Ungab’s claim.

Marcos had slammed Duterte for his criticism, accusing him of lying about the 2025 national budget.

He likewise said that as a former president, Duterte should know that it has never happened in the country’s history that Congress transmitted a spending measure with blank provisions.

Senate President Francis Escudero and Rep. Stella Quimbo, acting chairperson of the House Committee on Appropriations, have said that only the working draft of the budget bill had blank spaces.

Such blank provisions, they said, were filled out with the final amounts that were approved during the bicameral discussions by the technical staff of the Senate finance committee and reviewed and finalized by the House Committee on Appropriations.

The filled-out measure, they both said, was what was signed by Escudero and Speaker Martin Romualdez and ratified by the two houses of Congress and later transmitted to the Palace.

La Union Rep. Paolo Ortega V had said that the petition filed with the SC was intended to allegedly restore the more than P1 billion cut in the budget of office of Vice President Sara Duterte, which Congress realigned to the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Department of Health, among others.

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