Convenience is not a Constitutional value
Defenders of the Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) advance a familiar and seductive argument: convenience.
UA, they say, allows government to move quickly. It provides flexibility when revenues exceed targets or when funds suddenly become available. In a fast-moving economy, rigid budgets are inefficient. UA is portrayed as a practical safety valve.
The argument sounds reasonable.
It is also constitutionally dangerous.
Because convenience and efficiency are not constitutional values.
Checks and balances are.
And recent experience—now capped by the Supreme Court’s ruling declaring as unconstitutional the fund reversions under Special Provision. 1(d), Chapter XLIII, Unprogrammed Approrpiations of the 2024 General Appropriations Act and Department of Finance (DOF) Circular No 003-2024 —shows precisely why.
UA’s core design flaw
Under the Constitution, Congress alone appropriates public funds. The Executive implements what Congress has authorized. This separation is not procedural trivia; it is the central safeguard against fiscal abuse.
UA blurs this boundary. Congress enacts only a conditional appropriation, while the Executive is left to determine when—and effectively how much—of that appropriation becomes operative once “fiscal triggers” appear.
In practice, UA enables a two-stage appropriation:
- Congress creates a standby authority.
- The Executive completes the appropriation by deciding when the conditions are met.
That second step—deciding when public money becomes spendable—belongs to Congress, not the Executive.
The efficiency argument—and its real cost
UA proponents argue that this arrangement is justified by efficiency. But the Constitution deliberately makes budgeting slow, contested, and transparent. That friction is not a defect; it is the design.
UA short-circuits this process. It replaces legislative judgment with executive discretion, justified by internal certifications that are opaque and largely shielded from public scrutiny.
The danger is no longer theoretical.
Manufactured “Triggers”
UA may be activated only if specific conditions exist: excess revenues, new revenue sources, or unprogrammed loan proceeds. In 2024, none of these genuinely occurred.
Tax collections did not significantly exceed targets. No major new revenue streams emerged. Instead, the Executive relied on cash reversions—ordering the transfer of ₱167.23 billion from PhilHealth and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC) to the National Treasury—and then reclassifying those transfers as “revenue.”
The Supreme Court has now ruled that the PhilHealth reversion is unconstitutional. (There was no ruling on the reversion of the ₱107.23 PDIC deposit insurance funds as the petition filed questioned only the reversion of the Philhealth subsidy. But following the SC ruling, multiple business groups and advocacy organizations, like MBC, PCCI, FINEX and 1Sambayan are actively questioning and urging the return of said deposit insurance funds). PhilHealth funds reserved for health insurance are trust funds. They are not government income. They cannot be swept into the Treasury and treated as fiscal slack.
This ruling collapses the legal fiction that these reversions constituted “new” or “excess” revenues.
Why this matters for UA
UA exists only if additional money becomes lawfully available beyond what Congress originally programmed. If the supposed “new revenues” were actually unconstitutional fund reversions, then the legal trigger for UA never existed.
This exposes a deeper problem: UA creates incentives to manufacture triggers when real ones are absent.
When hundreds of billions of pesos are parked in standby appropriations, the pressure to activate them is enormous. UA becomes an invitation to stretch accounting rules and blur legal distinctions.
Trust funds become “idle cash.”
Insurance reserves become “excess balances.”
Temporary availability becomes permanent authority.
This is not efficiency. It is fiscal improvisation.
From Technical Flexibility to Structural Risk
For decades, UA’s constitutional flaw was tolerated because UA was small and rarely used, if at all. But starting with the 2023 GAA, UA ballooned to extraordinary levels—₱807 billion in 2023, ₱731 billion in 2024 and ₱363 billion in 2025, approaching 15 percent of the national budget at one point.
At that scale, UA is no longer a contingency mechanism. It becomes a parallel appropriations system, operating alongside the regular budget and largely outside public scrutiny.
Worse, UA becomes an alibi. When questionable projects surface, UA is invoked to explain them away—even when UA was never lawfully triggered.
How SP 1(d)/DOF Circular Cash Reversions Were Used to Masquerade as “Excess Revenues”
[2024 GAA enacted]
│ Special Provision 1(d) UA
│ ─ Authorizes transfer of “unused/excess” GOCC funds
│ to the National Treasury
│
▼
[DOF Issues Circular No 003-2024]
│ ▸ PhilHealth ordered to remit unused subsidy
│ ▸ PDIC ordered to remit Deposit Insurance Fund balances
▼
[Cash Transfers to Bureau of the Treasury]
│ ▸ ₱60B PhilHealth subsidy
│ ▸ ₱107.23B PDIC Deposit Insurance Fund
▼
[Accounting Reclassification]
│ ▸ Trust / insurance / earmarked funds
│ ▸ Reclassified as “National Government income”
▼
[Inflated Revenue Picture for 2024]
│ ▸ Artificial boost to “revenue collections”
│ ▸ Appearance of “excess” or “new” revenues
▼
[Attempted Trigger of Unprogrammed Appropriations]
│ ▸ UA requires excess or new revenues
│ ▸ SP 1(d) UA/DOF Circular cash reversions used as substitute
▼
[SUPREME COURT RULING]
│ ▸ SP 1(d) UA and DOF Circular 003-2024 are unconstitutional
│ ▸ PhilHealth funds are trust funds
│ ▸ Cannot be treated as NG revenue
▼
[Legal Collapse]
│ ▸ Reversions void ab initio
│ ▸ Any UA trigger based on them void
│ ▸ UA releases (if any) unconstitutional
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Safeguards, not shortcuts
The choice is not between flexibility and paralysis. It is between shortcuts and safeguards.
We already have mechanisms for flexibility: supplemental budgets, narrowly tailored contingencies, and emergency appropriations subject to legislative oversight. What we do not need is a mechanism that normalizes post-enactment discretion and treats separation of powers as an inconvenience.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the special provision of the 2024 GAA and the DOF Circular is a warning. Cash availability does not equal legal authority. Administrative convenience cannot override constitutional limits.
The necessary conclusion
UA is defended in the name of efficiency. But efficiency without accountability is not reform—it is risk.
UA weakens the separation of powers It tempts the Executive to complete Congress’ work.
It encourages the invention of fiscal triggers.
And it facilitates opacity and pork.
That is why UA should be declared unconstitutional—or abolished by Congress itself.
In budgeting, as in democracy, safeguards matter more than speed.
