HOW much oversight can lawmakers do in under 20 minutes?
The question is salient because Congress is the ultimate check on executive authority when it comes to matters of the purse. It is a solemn constitutional obligation of lawmakers to audit, question and safeguard every peso extracted from the working public.
It seemed like a display of legislative abdication, then, when the Senate Committee on Finance approved for plenary debate the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) proposed P785-million budget for 2027 after less than 20 minutes.
Days ahead of the hearing, Sen. JV Ejercito, the committee’s chairman, made it a point to say his panel would extend the traditional parliamentary courtesy to Vice President Sara Duterte when it deliberated the 2027 budget sought by her office.
Never mind that when it came to the day, Vice President Duterte — in the middle of an impeachment trial that accuses her of misusing public funds and amassing unexplained wealth — did not bother to show up to defend her budget, and instead sent her chief of staff to represent her.
Noting her absence, Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian asked the chief of staff about Duterte’s whereabouts, and said he hoped she would appear for the plenary debate of her agency’s budget.
Two of the vice president’s staunch allies in the Senate then moved for the committee approval of the OVP budget due to parliamentary courtesy. The motion was swiftly carried without objection.
To be clear, this was not unusual.
Historically, both the House of Representatives and the Senate extend parliamentary courtesy to co-equal branches and constitutional offices, such as the Office of the President (OP) and the OVP. Under an unwritten tradition, when the budget sponsor introduces the OVP budget, lawmakers swiftly move to terminate the interpellation period out of courtesy. Committee hearings and plenary debates under this tradition often conclude within 15 to 20 minutes without deep questioning.
While intended to promote interbranch respect, this practice has repeatedly led to severe oversight failures, opacity and the unchecked misuse of public funds. There is no better example of this than the mess at the OVP and the Department of Education (DepEd), which the vice president used to head.
During the 2022 and 2023 budget hearings, members of the House and Senate invoked parliamentary courtesy to swiftly approve the proposed budgets for the OVP and DepEd. Lawmakers bypassed detailed questioning regarding requested confidential and intelligence funds (CIF).
In total, P612.5 million in confidential funds were spent over 2022 and 2023.
Of this, P500 million was allocated to the OVP, and P112.5 million was allocated to DepEd. This included P125 million spent by the OVP in late 2022 in just 11 days.
Because Congress initially granted courtesy rather than vetting these appropriations, audit procedures were delayed. Later probes by the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability and the Commission on Audit revealed that over P73 million in OVP spending was disallowed due to irregular receipts and unsupported operational expenses.
DepEd funds intended for student safety or intelligence programs lacked proper documentation or legal authorization.
Public outrage over secret funds diverted to non-security agencies led to a breakdown in governance transparency and eventual impeachment complaints.
But the OVP is not the only case where parliamentary courtesy — and its consequent lack of oversight — is extended.
The proposed P10.15-billion budget of the OP for fiscal year 2027 was passed swiftly in committee hearings due to the longstanding practice of extending parliamentary or interbranch courtesy to the co-equal branch of government.
Members of the opposition and several civil society groups voiced concerns over using parliamentary courtesy to skip lengthy debates. Critics pointed out that roughly P4.5 billion — nearly half of the proposed allocation — was earmarked for CIF, and that such allocations warrant thorough public scrutiny and transparency rather than swift passage.
For decades, the proposed budgets for the OP and OVP were routinely passed in under 10 to 15 minutes at the committee level out of “deferential tradition.”
This has led to a systemic lack of transparency. Huge allocations for lump-sum items, intelligence funds, and contingent funds under executive offices are repeatedly shielded from public scrutiny. The practice prevents lawmakers from questioning policy directions, staffing expansions, or line-item expenditures.
There is a popular idiom stating that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Do our lawmakers, steeped in an ultimately dangerous tradition, expect budget abuses to suddenly disappear if they keep looking away?