Budget Season! Toby reveals how the HOR is once again up to NO GOOD

In PGMN anchor Atty. Rowena Guanzon’s latest episode, Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco breaks down how the House budget process works, while the discussion exposes a larger problem inside Congress — the same institution that scrutinizes the spending of government agencies does not subject its own budget to the same level of committee review. Tiangco explains how billions can be added during the budget process, including through stages where the public cannot easily trace who requested specific amounts. He also describes an alleged system where projects could already carry a percentage before implementation, with a 20% payment allegedly due once an item entered the spending bill and middlemen able to resell projects at a higher cut. The episode also examines the political structure surrounding those decisions. Guanzon and Tiangco discuss the influence of House leadership over key committees, the sharp increases in the chamber’s own budget during the Romualdez speakership, and Tiangco’s personal account of being quoted a percentage for an additional ₱200-million Navotas project. They then turn to the accountability gap. Engineers and lower-level officials have faced consequences, while questions remain over those with greater influence over how projects entered the budget in the first place. The central issue is no longer only whether public works were overpriced, unfinished, or substandard. It is whether the budget itself became the starting point of the scheme — and whether Congress is willing to expose its own books to prove otherwise.