THE Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to dismiss a petition against the General Appropriations Act of 2025 filed by the group led by former Executive Secretary Vic Rodriguez.
In his motion to deny the plea on behalf of Speaker Martin Romualdez, Senate President Francis Escudero and Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, Solicitor General Menardo Guevara said the petition should be junked for “fatal procedural defects” and lack of merit.
In a comment filed on last Feb. 27, the OSG said Republic Act No. 12116 or the GAA 2025 does not violate the Constitution and Republic Act No. 112233 or the Universal Health Care Act as Rodriguez’ group claimed.
The OSG asserted that exclusion of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation’s (PhilHealth) budget allocation from RA No. 12116 will not impede the agency’s mandate to implement the UHCA.
“It is a baseless assumption that the reduction of PhilHealth’s budget would be tantamount to the State’s withdrawal from its constitutional commitment to protect and promote the people’s right to health,” the OSG said.
Aside from not allocating public funds for PhilHealth, the petitioners also questioned before the Supreme Court the Bicameral Conference Committee report with blank items, including the budget for education not having the highest allocation and increases in allotments for the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The OSG cited the availability of PhilHealth’s P600-billion reserve funds, including its fund balance to ensure that it can continue to provide health benefits to its beneficiaries.
Addressing the blank items issue, the OSG said the items do not appear on the enrolled bill which is binding upon the court.
“Being the movants in this case, it is petitioners' burden to show the claimed anomalies, as they would appear in the enrolled bill, and not any other internal document of Congress,” the OSG explained.
The government lawyers also underscored that institutions were not misclassified as part of the education sector to make it appear that the sector still gets the highest funding in government.
The Philippine Military Academy, the Philippine National Police Academy, the National Defense College of the Philippines, the Local Government Academy, the Philippine Public Safety College, the Philippine Science High School System, and the Science Education Institute are education institutions “as their names clearly indicate,” according to the OSG.
“Here, petitioners question the wisdom of government budgetary priorities and sectoral allocations – policy questions beyond this Honorable Court’s jurisdiction,” the OSG noted.
Both the petitioners and the respondents are expected to thresh out their positions on the 2025 budget in the oral arguments scheduled by the SC next month in Baguio City.
