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The House allots eight days to debate on the proposed 2025 budget, scheduling September 23 for the deliberation of the funding request of Sara Duterte’s Office of the Vice President
The House of Representatives started deliberations in the plenary on the proposed 2025 budget on Monday, September 16.
The elevation of the General Appropriations Bill or House Bill 10800 to the plenary means the 139-member committee on appropriations has finished discussing the budget proposals of every government agency, allowing the rest of the 300-plus-member chamber to weigh in on the funding requests.
Here’s what to expect.
Marathon debates to beat end-September deadline
The House leadership has committed to pass the proposed 2025 budget before the chamber goes on a one-month break in October. This is a yearly schedule for the House, and since the new administration ushered in a new batch of lawmakers, the chamber has always met its self-imposed end-September deadline.
The House has eight working days this year, from September 16 to September 25, to debate on the budget proposal in the plenary, longer by a day from last year’s plenary deliberations. As the chamber tries to beat the clock, lawmakers will go to work even on a Friday, which is usually a no-work day at the Batasang Pambansa.
Check the document below for the full schedule of the plenary budget deliberations for every government agency.
Lawmakers will be the one standing behind the rostrum, not the heads of government agencies
If you’re not familiar with the budget process in the House of Representatives, it may come as a surprise that heads of government agencies are not the ones personally defending their budget requests from lawmakers who have numerous questions.
Instead, the House leadership assigns its members to sponsor agencies’ funding proposals, answering on offices’ behalf. This is why every now and then, you will see a lawmaker-sponsor ask for a brief suspension of the proceedings to coordinate with the agency head when it comes to the questions that are difficult to answer.
This is also why committee-level budget deliberations are important, because it’s the only time that lawmakers, and the viewing public, get to hear answers to budget-related questions direct from the head of the government agency’s mouth. When the panel this year observed the long-honored tradition of granting parliamentary courtesy to the Office of the President, the electorate lost the opportunity to hear answers straight from Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin.
With our without VP Duterte, she will be the star of the 2025 budget debates
Vice President Sara Duterte and her entire office already snubbed the second round of committee-level budget deliberations for her agency, so chances of her gracing the House to support her budget sponsor are very little at the moment.
Whether or not she comes, the plenary debates this year will possibly climax on the day the House tackles the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) budget on September 23. Lawmakers already previously pounced on her past confidential expenses, among other key issues, and without an answer from Duterte that congressmen can be satisfied with, the subject just won’t die.
It will also be tremendously challenging for Lanao del Sur 1st District Representative Zia Alonto Adiong, the designated main sponsor of the OVP’s budget, to defend her proposal, as Adiong said her agency has not coordinated with him.
The appropriations committee has slashed the OVP’s budget proposal for 2025 from P2.037 billion to P733 million. The public should watch out if the frustrated lawmakers would move to reduce that figure further.
Airtime for Makabayan bloc
There’s a super majority in Congress, and congressional insiders know that even members of the House minority cannot really be classified as part of the opposition. Like in the past two years, expect representatives France Castro, Arlene Brosas, and Raoul Manuel of the three-member Makabayan bloc to get the most airtime during the plenary debates, as they usually interpellate budget sponsors of every government agency.
In previous years, the leftist bloc chided the House leadership of railroading the approval of the yearly budget. As the House’s timeline remains more or less the same, it’s likely that the Makabayan lawmakers will make the same criticism when the chamber passes the Marcos’ administration’s funding request of P6.352 trillion — 10.1% higher than the current year’s P5.768 trillion national budget — on September 25. – Rappler.com
