THE most problematic element of the 2025 national budget coming out of the bicameral conference committee and apparently ratified by the Senate and the House of Representatives is the fact that they have slashed budgets elsewhere even as they want to dip their fingers into a massive dole-out program, and they want to project it as enabling social justice.

While I support the move to withhold subsidies from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), I am appalled at the manner in which Congress has blatantly violated the Constitution by having a budget where the allocation for the education sector, which is composed of the Department of Education (DepEd), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the state universities and colleges (SUCs), and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda), is now merely the second highest. As approved, the Department of Public Works and Highways has the largest allocation in the 2025 national budget.

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