A PHILIPPINE congressman on Thursday urged the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to release a variance report comparing the House of Representatives-approved version of the 2025 budget and the enacted law to determine the source of alleged insertions.
Manila Rep. Rolando M. Valeriano said the release of the report would show line-by-line differences between what the House passed in plenary and what was inserted after bicameral deliberations.
“Let the numbers speak,” he said in a statement in mixed English and Filipino. “The variance report will reveal the truth — what the House actually passed, and what was added during the bicameral conference.”
Mr. Valeriano insists the House had no role in the alleged tweaks that surfaced in the final version of the P6.79-trillion spending plan. He said the Budget department already has copies of both the House-approved bill and the 2025 General Appropriations Act, making it possible to prepare a comparison report.
The call comes amid persistent allegations of congressional insertions in this year’s budget. President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. delayed signing the 2025 spending plan for more than a week in December to review the allocations. He later vetoed more than P194 billion worth of items deemed inconsistent with the administration’s priorities.
Mr. Valeriano argued that making the variance report public would clear the House of accusations that it was behind questionable realignments linked to infrastructure projects such as roads and flood control.
“It’s unfair to accuse the House of insertions without evidence proving that the additional funds or realignments came from it,” he said.
He also called on the government to release the list of line items tagged as “for later release,” which he said were not included in the Executive’s original National Expenditure Program submitted to Congress last year.
“The public deserves to know which items are real, which are implementable, and which ones were merely inserted along the way,” he said. “Transparency is the best disinfectant.”
To address concerns, the House has introduced reforms for next year’s budget cycle, including the abolition of the so-called “small committee” and the inclusion of civil society groups in deliberations.
Mr. Marcos in his state of the nation address last month warned that he would reject any 2026 budget that strays from the Executive’s proposal. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio