By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
The Senate’s approval on second reading of a P6.793-trillion spending plan for 2026 should usher in a moment of resolve. Now, more than ever, the government must prove it can wield enormous resources with competence and integrity.
What most Filipinos question these days is the ability of the Marcos Junior administration to take on a monumental national budget, when in the last three years, all it has proven is the opposite: that it is utterly inept at making our taxes work for our people.
The nightmare of ghost flood-mitigation projects under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) remains hanging over our heads. It’s like a gaping wound that exposes how billions can vanish into thin air while communities drown.
These scandals that have dragged many political characters close to the administration to infamy are not just stories for sharing on social media. They’re evidence of criminal acts in government, of a system incapable of tracking, monitoring, or safeguarding funds meant for public infrastructure and basic services. Evidence that every peso we surrender to the state is at risk of spillovers, kickbacks, or outright theft.
Ever so cautiously, Firing Line will commend the Senate for making appropriate adjustments in preparing the spending bill for 2026. Let me cite how it slashed DPWH’s budget by P55.91 billion, cut P68.5 billion from bloated unprogrammed appropriations, and increased funding where it actually matters — classrooms, universities, and internal security.
Senator Ping Lacson deserves credit for pushing the Chamber to remove “allocables” — what he has termed as the “new pork barrel” or those shadowy, pre-identified funds waiting for favored contractors and rigged bids.
The resistance he faced only proves how entrenched this behavior remains among some members of the august body. Pardon me – not so august, since a number of them are actually implicated in the worst government project thefts in history.
More than budget cuts on paper, perhaps the real measure of reform in planning the budget is in ensuring that massive allocations are not allowed to sit idly in department coffers. Some offices of government are praised wrongfully for their “savings,” which are actually project funds that are unspent — ergo, no output.
In other cases, such departments like the DPWH are bloated with funding, but they could only pretend to execute thousands of projects, even if, in actuality, there are too few qualified contractors to faithfully follow the design and finish the job.
We’ve already seen what happens when the big players and triple-A contractors snare the projects but resort to subcontracting down the ladder. Former Public Works chief Babes Singson himself warned how substandard builders end up holding the bag, and the public pays the price in crumbling work and wasted funds.
Congress must protect public money — not just from corruption, but from incompetence. The point is not to brag about a big number when drafting the budget to trillions. The point is to ensure a budget that is realistic, executable, and honest, grounded in the hard truth that government exists to serve the Filipino, not to enrich those who treat taxpayers as collateral damage.
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