By Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza, Reporter
PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. on Monday called out his predecessor for “lying” after claiming that the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) is invalid for having blank items.
“He’s lying,” he said. “He was a president. He knows that you cannot pass a GAA with blanks,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taguig City, referring to former President Rodrigo R. Duterte. “And he’s lying because he knows perfectly well that that doesn’t ever happen.”
Mr. Duterte and Davao City Rep. Isidro T. Ungab at the weekend said in an online program that the 2025 national budget is “invalid.” The congressman accused his colleagues of approving a spending plan that included “blanks.”
Mr. Ungab said the bicameral conference committee report approved by the Senate and House of Representatives had line items without the amounts. The Executive branch might have filled it out later, he added.’
“In the entire history of the Philippines, the GAA is not allowed to have an item without specifying the project, its cost and funding,” Mr. Marcos said. “So, it’s a lie.”
Mr. Duterte and Mr. Ungab were joined in the program by former Executive Secretary Victor D. Rodriguez and Duterte-era Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board chairman Martin Delgra III.
Malacañang earlier on Monday said Mr. Duterte’s allegations were “malicious.”
“Some quarters, including a former president, have maliciously peddled fake news about President Marcos having signed the GAA of 2025 with certain parts of the enactment purposely left blank to enable the administration to simply fill in the amounts like in a blank check,” Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin said in a statement.
“The peddling of such fake news is outrightly malicious and should be condemned as criminal. No page of the 2025 National Budget was left unturned before the President signed it into law,” he added.
Mr. Bersamin said items in the GAA were “exhaustively reviewed” by hundreds of professional staff from Congress and the Department of Budget and Management.
“This meticulous line-by-line scrutiny is a pre-enactment check performed by dedicated civil servants to ensure that the GAA contained no single discrepancy in the amounts being appropriated,” he added.
Mr. Bersamin said it would be impossible for any funding items to be left blank, “as alleged by misinformed and malicious sources.” “The true facts and the printed figures appearing in the GAA easily debunk the malicious claims of deliberate blanks being left for filling in.”
The Budget department said the allegations were “completely false and reckless.”
“Under the 1987 Constitution, it is the General Appropriations Bill, and not the bicameral report that is officially submitted for the consideration and approval or veto of the President,” it said in a separate statement.
It said the bill, with all its details, was presented to the President. “Once signed, the GAB becomes the Law — the GAA.”
“To reiterate, the bill presented to and signed by the President is a complete document, with no blank pages or missing details. In no case does the Executive issue a GAA with blank pages or figures,” the DBM said.
Mr. Marcos said the public should see the budget for themselves, citing the availability of the GAA on the DBM website.
“Take a look at it. You don’t even need to read the whole document,” he said in Filipino. Just look for the items they claim are blank checks.”
The Executive branch prepares a proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Both chambers of Congress deliberate on the proposed budget, and government agencies must defend their proposed funding.
The budget is then passed separately by the House and Senate. A bicameral conference committee reconciles differences between the two versions.
Mr. Marcos, before the approval of the GAA, said the bicameral committee’s spending version was far from the version the Executive branch submitted to the House of Representatives in July.
The Executive can veto the budget items or the entire bill.
Mr. Marcos on Dec. 30 signed into law the P6.326-trillion national budget for 2025 but vetoed more than P194 billion worth of line items that he said were inconsistent with his administration’s priorities.
