As both houses of Congress continue their bicameral conference committee discussions on the 2026 budget bill, Senate President Pro Tempore Ping Lacson is confident that the Senate will fight all the way to ensure next year’s budget is pork-free.
Lacson, an eagle-eyed watchdog of the national budget, said this includes the Senate’s resolution to ratify the enrolled or final version of the budget bill to prevent the possibility of last-minute insertions.
“The budget must be pork-free. It will be too much if despite the fallout of the corruption behind the flood control project mess, there are still those who want to exploit public funds,” the veteran legislator said in a mix of English and Filipino in an interview on DWIZ radio.
“The interest of constituents is important but not the interest of kickbacks in infrastructure projects.”
“The bicam could be a matter of give-and-take but we must ensure the integrity of the budget and not allow self-interest. The interest of constituents is important but not the interest of kickbacks in infrastructure projects,” the seasoned lawmaker added.
The senator said that aside from the reforms the Senate made in its version of the budget bill, Senate President Tito Sotto and Senate finance committee chairman Win Gatchalian introduced a “novel idea” to have senators ratify not just the bicameral conference committee report but the enrolled bill.
“We’ll ratify not the bicam report but the final version which is the enrolled bill, which incorporates the bicam report.”
“One more thing we will do is we’ll ratify not the bicam report but the final version which is the enrolled bill, which incorporates the bicam report,” he said.
Lacson said the Senate made several reforms in its version of the 2026 budget bill, including:
* Removing the allocables from the budget bill. Lacson referred to allocables as the new pork barrel because they allow funding for projects before they are even identified – opening the door for other abuses such as rigged bidding for contracts benefiting favored players.
* Removing the Sustainable Infra Projects Alleviating Gaps (SIPAG), many of whose items had the same names as – and thus potential duplicates of – those under the Basic Infrastructure Programs (BIP) in the Department of Public Works and Highways’ budget.
* Trimming the unprogrammed allocations to include only funding for legitimate items such as foreign-assisted projects and the AFP modernization program.
This is aside from making the budget process transparent through livestreaming, from the committee hearings to the bicameral meetings.
“One more good thing is that all of those who introduce amendments will have a sense of responsibility to make sure their projects are free of corruption because projects that go wrong will be traced to them,” Lacson concluded.
