[In This Economy] First open bicam: From hard to soft pork

For the first time ever, we witnessed the live-streaming of bicam meetings.

“Bicam” stands for the bicameral conference committee, which comprises selected representatives from the House of Representatives and the Senate. In this penultimate step in the budget approval process, members of both chambers of congress reconcile discrepancies in the national budget bill or the General Appropriations Bill or GAB. After this, the GAB is sent to the Palace for final approval of the president.

In 2025, for the first time ever, the bicam meetings opened up to the public. The proceedings were live-streamed from December 13 to 18. This, in itself, is groundbreaking, a solid step toward budget transparency. In past years, especially in the crafting of the 2025 budget, lawmakers huddled behind closed doors and hid massive budget insertions that paved the way for flood control and other dubious projects. (Insertions were also done in the past, but not as glaring as in the 2025 budget.)

Hopes are high that the first-ever open bicam will do much good. But did it?

Here’s my topline takeaway: despite the open bicam setup, lawmakers merely reallocated part of the budget from “hard” pork (physical infrastructure like roads and bridges) to “soft” pork (financial assistance or ayuda). Pork prevailed in the end.

The figure below summarizes some key budget realignments.

Hard pork

First, there’s “hard” pork. Note from the graph the significant increase in the budgets for the Department of Agriculture’s Farm to Market Roads (P16 billion to P33 billion, or 2.1x) and the Department of Health’s Health Facilities Enhancement Program (P14 billion to P21 billion, or 1.5x). Budget watchdogs like the People’s Budget Coalition have flagged these as potential pork projects.

In the open bicam, we even saw attempts of the executive branch trying to interfere with lawmakers’ discussions where hard pork was concerned.

After the approval of the budget for Farm to Market Roads, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel sent a letter to a senator saying that some projects were, in fact, not cleared with him, and requested that the list of already-approved projects be changed. This earned the ire of Senator Loren Legarda on day 4 of the bicam.

More anomalous was the appearance of Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Vince Dizon on the second day of the bicam. He tried to explain why as much as P45 billion of the DPWH’s budget needs to be restored. The context is that, amid the flood control scandal this year, the Senate drastically reduced the DPWH’s budget. But Secretary Dizon claimed that this would render “unimplementable” as much as 10,000 projects. The error allegedly comes from erroneous assumptions about the cost of construction materials and equipment. House lawmakers were adamant that the DPWH’s budget should be restored. But the Senate refused to budge.

So bad was the impasse between the House representatives and the senators that, on day 3, the bicam failed to meet at all. After lengthy backdoor negotiations, the Senate prevailed and the bicam approved the lower budget for the DPWH (P529.6 billion, versus their original request of P881 billion).

Dizon’s presence in the bicam is highly irregular. At that stage, no member of the Cabinet nor the executive branch should appear. It reeks of political interference. Also, it suggests that the huge budget cuts proposed by the Senate were a real threat to the pork of district representatives pressured to “bring home the bacon.”

When the bicam was done, lawmakers touted that the reduction of DPWH’s budget generated P20.7 billion in “savings,” part of which went to PhilHealth (P16 billion) and the National Disaster Risk Management Fund (P4.2 billion). But this is very misleading: you can only generate savings if you already spent some money and some income was left. No actual spending has happened yet. It’s more accurately a “reallocation.”

Soft pork

Then there’s “soft” pork. In the graph above, it’s obvious that the budget of all sorts of financial aid were bumped up by the bicam, including:

• MAIFIP – Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (2.1x the NEP level)
• DSWD AICS – Assistance to Individuals In Crisis Situations (2.4x)
• DOLE TUPAD – Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (2.1x)
• CHED Tulong Dunong (from 0 to P2 billion)
• DILG LGSF – Local Government Support Fund (3x)
• DA PAFFF – Presidential Assistance to Farmers, Fisherfolk, and Families (from 0 to P10 billion)

The total budget jump in these projects, thanks to the bicam, amounted to P120.9 billion. Among these, the biggest jump in absolute terms went to AICS (additional P36.9 billion). In past years, AICS (which can be given out to provide aid for food, education, medical, transportation, and even burial expenses) was abused for political patronage.

MAIFIP, or the system of guarantee letters that politicians dole out to help defray people’s hospital expenses, also blew up in the 2026 budget bicam. Some lawmakers insisted that this is necessary because the social health insurance of PhilHealth and universal health care are still “imperfect.” But using that logic, they will find excuses every year to fund MAIFIP, and the incentive is to never fix the health system. Much better to pour that money into PhilHealth and pressure that agency to fix its systems and expand its benefit packages.

TUPAD, a cash-for-work scheme that became prominent during the pandemic, also lacks proper targeting and monitoring systems. It has also been abused as a tool for political patronage.

The ballooning of the Local Government Support Fund for 2026 is likewise dangerous because it includes highly discretionary sub-funds like FALGU (Financial Assistance to Local Government Units) and GEF (Growth Equity Fund), which lack clear allocation rules and participatory safeguards. These are prone to patronage as well. By shifting implementation to LGUs with weak monitoring and limited national oversight, corruption becomes more dispersed, harder to trace, and harder to challenge legally.

Tulong Dunong (scholarships) and President Marcos’ PAFFF (dole-outs to farmers and fisherfolk) are outright insertions in the 2026 budget bicam totaling P12 billion.

Pork persists

All these reallocations in the bicam reek of wasteful pork, whether hard or soft.

At least some people (especially in academic circles) were happy with the P1-billion insertion for Project NOAH, the Philippines’ “primary disaster risk reduction and management program.” But in the grand scheme of things, this is tiny relative to the adjustments made for various pork projects.

Sunlight, as they say, is the best of disinfectants. But clearly, merely opening the bicam to the public (through live-streaming) did little if anything at all to fix lawmakers’ obsession with pork. As expected, much of the demand for pork came from the House. The Senate tried to clean up the budget and cut away some pork, but eventually it gave way to all sorts of patronage-driven ayuda projects. As this unfolded, budget watchdogs and civil society groups were mere spectators who can’t speak up or oppose such moves.

I just hope that lawmakers don’t come out traumatized by the open bicam and lobby for closed bicam in future years. Despite its initial imperfections, the open bicam setup is a reform that’s long overdue. It’s crucial for the Filipino public to peek inside the innards of the can of worms that is the bicam process, no matter how dirty or disgusting it might look. – Rappler.com

Dr. JC Punongbayan is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan).