A RANKING Leader of the House of Representatives said the lower chamber did not en-gineer the P74-billion PhilHealth realignment or the P12-billion cut in the Department of Education’s 2025 budget, noting the House version kept both intact when it sent the measure to the Senate.
House Deputy Speaker and Antipolo City Rep. Ronaldo Puno made the assertion during a press briefing Tuesday, saying the public record of the budget shows what the chamber approved and where the divergence began.
“In the House version, the PhilHealth budget was intact. The Department of Education budget was not reduced — in fact, it was increased. What was reduced was the Public Works budget,” Puno said.
He contrasted the House version with what became the General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2025, stressing that the disputed changes did not originate from the House but appeared only after the measure left the chamber.
“That’s what was sent to the Senate. In the final GAA, the PhilHealth fund was removed, the DepEd budget was reduced, and the Public Works budget was increased,” he said.
With the budget season opening, Puno said his National Unity Party bloc will not proceed with work on the 2026 spending bill until the sequence of adjustments in the 2025 law is explained, calling it a matter of institutional credibility and accountability to taxpayers.
He said the immediate task is to determine how the final text diverged from the House-approved version, identify when the changes occurred, and establish who was responsible for moving funds from PhilHealth and DepEd to other allocations.
Puno added that the probe should reveal who benefited from the shifts, saying: “The increase in the DPWH budget came from the reduction of DepEd and the removal of the trust fund. In short, someone benefited from that.”
On questions about liability, he said fact-finding should come first, but mechanisms exist within and outside the Senate to act if wrongdoing is established. “Now all we want is for us to understand how it all happened,” he said.
