The most iron-clad rule in history and politics is that of unintended consequences. Furious over the President ordering the publication of a list of the top contractors who cornered flood control projects, the House and Senate competed to mount investigations. 

The main point of all the posturing, was to corral public anger within the boundaries of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and restrict the accountable to the people everyone already loves to hate (because of social media), crooked contractors in cahoots with equally corrupt bureaucrats. 

Congress — both the House and the Senate — proved a poor match against the President for three reasons. 

The first is constitutional. the President proposes a national budget, but it’s in bold strokes and focuses on national schemes. The House, specifically, has the power of the purse, which is shorthand for saying, as the national representatives closest to the electorate, all the fine detail on what to actually spend for (and how much) has to start with the House as it goes over the President’s submission (then the Senate, with its national electorate, looks at the budget).

The second is more functional: while every congressman has to ensure a slice of the national pie for the people who elected them, and senators have to do likewise for the sectors that mattered to their candidacies, what they itemize in the budget still relies on the Palace because it holds the national checkbook. The power of any bureaucracy, after all, is the power to delay (ignore, lose, forget) or to expedite.

The third reason is ignorance on the part of the public when it comes to the workings of government, with the budget process being the most tedious, boring, jargon-filled government activity of all. 

Marcos’ options

Taken together, it means the President can wriggle out of things almost regardless of what emerges, while the more evidence is gathered, the fewer congressmen and senators can escape unscathed from the scandal (even his critics who accuse him of being too happy-go-lucky about his responsibilities have helped shield him: “Is that so,” the President can tell them, “I never knew that!”). 

Consider the President’s options: did his secretary of public works, already such an old boy as he started out in dear old dad’s time, turn out to be implicated in the business-as-usual system? Why, fire him! And what is a regional, provincial, or city director other than purely expendable? Ditto contractors: charge ‘em, jail ‘em, forget ‘em.

The late president Fidel V. Ramos should have chosen a naval career because the way he threw people overboard during his presidency had all the cool detachment of an admiral; it was a joy to behold (many of his predecessors and successors failed to appreciate that disposing of underperforming or outright scandalous lieutenants is a virtue and not a sign of weakness). Ferdinand Marcos Jr. wastes as little time on troublesome lieutenants as the rest of us do with Kleenex.

But the harder you look, the worse it becomes for members of Congress.

Luckily (for far too many legislators) much of the hard work (and racketeering isn’t effortless) relies on a few enterprising people; so in this, as in scandalous instances of spending in the past, some names will overshadow all the rest who are nobodies nationally, anyway (which is why it’s more make-or-break for senators who can’t even aspire to election unless nationally known).

Carving skills

Here’s the thing, the portions of the budget given up to the kind of projects-as-pork were carved out of other items. Some of this carving out meant entire items were eliminated, without legislators sweating over who lost out: for example, the PhilHealth subsidy of P74.4B was removed. Other items were trimmed and became smaller: for example, P50B cut from 4Ps in the 2025 General Appropriations Bill, where the cutting was done without heed of its impact. 

Case in point, in 2024, legislators cut P223B from Foreign Assisted Projects (FAPs), both the loan proceeds and the peso counterpart. FAPs are foreign assisted projects. supported by signed loan agreements. When we receive loans, the proceeds need to be authorized or appropriated by Congress, together with our counterpart funds. The question now is: what happened to the projects funded by these loans? Were we penalized by our creditors (e.g. commitment fees?) for diverting the loaned funds? 

In any case, what was cut out, could then be identified for any purpose legislators desired. They could  be added to other existing items, such as — wait for it —  infrastructure: to which P289B was added. Or they could create new items: P26B for AKAP, a cash dole out for the near-poor. This was such a handy scheme that there are three others of this type — AICS, MAIFP and TUPAD. Unlike 4Ps, there are not rules based and have no conditionalities; they are pure patronage dole outs. In 2025, they totaled more than P120B.

There’s a reason you’re dizzy reading this: this wasn’t about nipping and tucking items in the budget so as to still present, somehow, a pleasing picture of a budget; it was wholesale butchery resulting in a Frankenstein budget. By all accounts, nothing has been done on this scale before, and it was repeated thrice. 

In the previous Duterte administration, those in the know suggest, as far as the budget and public works was concerned, the President’s kin got a giant share; the scale may have been larger but the practice was nothing new. But perhaps because of the practices they were more familiar with, more exposed to, allegations of crookedness involved claims of percentages involving the procurement of everything from navy ships to medical supplies such as vaccines and medical equipment; or old-fashioned smuggling of everything from rice to sugar, onions and pork, or simply being on the take from POGOs and even drug dealers. 

Necessity being the mother of invention, and with a capable and equipped media armed with an audience becoming a Covid casualty, legislators hit upon what they felt was the perfect confluence of interests. Except their kids had to brag about it, which got other kids to raise holy hell.