The General Appropriations Act and priority spending

The recent proposed budget has been criticized by certain sectors for allocating more spending for public works than education. The criticism is, however, unwarranted and simply wrong. Nevertheless, while it is the position here that the government does have the prerogative to apportion funds on areas it deems more important, public works isn’t it.

Indeed, Art. XIV.5 of the Constitution does provide: “The State shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment.”

The reasoning behind this said provision, as cited by the Supreme Court in Guingona vs. Carague (1991), is narrated pithily:

“In explaining his proposed amendment, Mr. Ople stated that all the great and sincere piety professed by every President and every Congress of the Philippines since the end of World War II for the economic welfare of the public schoolteachers always ended up in failure and this failure, he stated, had caused mass defection of the best and brightest teachers to other careers, including menial jobs in overseas employment and concerted actions by them to project their grievances, mainly over low pay and abject working conditions.

“He pointed to the high expectations generated by the February Revolution, especially keen among public schoolteachers, which at present exacerbate these long frustrated hopes.

“Mr. Ople stated that despite the sincerity of all administrations that tried vainly to respond to the needs of the teachers, the increase for public schoolteachers had to be multiplied many times by the number of government employees in general and their equitable claims to any pay standardization such that the pay rate of teachers is hopelessly pegged to the rate of government workers in general. This, he stated, foredoomed the prospect of a significant pay increase for teachers.

“Mr. Ople pointed out that the recognition by the Constitution of the highest priority for public schoolteachers, and by implication, for all teachers, would ensure that the President and Congress would be strongly urged by a constitutional mandate to grant to them such a level of remuneration and other incentives that would make teaching competitive again and attractive to the best available talents in the nation.”

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court did then point out that:

“While it is true that under Section 5(5), Article XIV of the Constitution Congress is mandated to ‘assign the highest budgetary priority to education’ in order to ‘insure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment,’ it does not thereby follow that the hands of Congress are so hamstrung as to deprive it the power to respond to the imperatives of the national interest and for the attainment of other state policies or objectives.”

Indeed, otherwise could not have been the intent. In the Constitutional Commission records itself (VOL. IV, Aug. 30, 1986; R.C.C. NO. 70) the following exchange is instructive:

“MR. GUINGONA: May I restate briefly what I said yesterday. This is more an expression of an objective and it is, in effect, a mandate to the State, as our distinguished chairman has said, to give top priority to education. This means that in the allocation of the budget, they should give more percentage to education vis-a-vis the other services or operation.

MR. RODRIGO: Is it a mere statement of objective or is this a commitment? The way I read it, it is a commitment of the State.

MR. GUINGONA: It is more a statement of objective, but it is a mandate to the State to give top priority and to seek sources of revenue in order to be able to comply with the mandate.”

Mandate is not a commitment or obligation but an “authority” (see Cambridge Dictionary), thus giving the implication that exercise of such is within the discretion and judgment of the one authorized.

Thus, as stated here previously, the Philippine defense budget pegs Philippine defense spending rising from P204 billion in 2023 to P238 billion in 2024. It is projected to expand by another 6.4% in 2025. Yet, compare that with United States’ defense spending being at 3.38% of its GDP. Singapore’s defense budget is around 2.5% of its GDP, followed by South Korea at 2%, and Japan is increasing its defense budget to 1.6% (from its formerly flat spending of around 1% for the past couple of years). Philippine GDP currently being P26.55 trillion, this means that the country’s defense spending share to GDP is only at 0.896% (see “The existential importance of Philippine defense spending,” Rocio Salle Gatdula, Manila Times, September 2024).

Read the foregoing alongside another study, “The Implications of Defense Expenditure on Philippine Economic Growth” (Julia Rocio S. Gatdula, University of Asia and the Pacific), which examined the relationship between Philippine defense spending and economic growth, and found that for every 1% increase in defense expenditure there results an estimated increase of 0.12% in GDP.

The findings cogently suggest that “it may be more imperative for the Philippines to allow the Defense department greater flexibility in terms of budget allocation due to its possible multi-dimensional effect, particularly the geopolitical, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of the Philippines. This, coincidentally, is similarly indicated in the aims pointed out in the National Security Policy (NPS) of 2023 to 2028 and the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) of 2023 to 2028. Investing in the defense sector should be seen more and more not merely as a purely national security matter but also as a positive catalyst in sustaining or facilitating the country’s economic growth.” (“Philippine defense spending and its impact on economic growth,” BusinessWorld, September 2023).

And though the Constitution does allow priority spending for education, nevertheless, Article II.IV declares that: “The prime duty of the Government is to serve and protect the people. The Government may call upon the people to defend the State and, in the fulfillment thereof, all citizens may be required, under conditions provided by law, to render personal, military or civil service.” So clearly more must be done.

Rather then that the government continue with previous administrations’ humongously misguided policy of trying to give everyone a college education, the country will be far better off spending more for its immediate survival.

Jemy Gatdula is a lawyer specializing in international economic law and the law of armed conflict, as well as constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.