By Benjamin Cuaresma
MANILA — Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson has thrown a sharp challenge at the way billions in government projects are identified and funded:
Lacson said development priorities should start with the local government units (LGUs) through their development planning mechanisms—not through political project insertions during the national budget process.
His point is blunt: the people who live with the problem know the problem best.
A mayor knows which roads flood.
Farmers know where irrigation is lacking.
Communities know which bridges, schools and public facilities are urgently needed.
Those priorities should therefore feed directly into national government programs, including projects implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Agriculture (DA).
The danger, Lacson warned, is when the process gets reversed—when projects are pushed from the political level downward and later presented as accomplishments of individual lawmakers.
That raises the uncomfortable question:
Are projects being funded because communities need them—or because politicians want to claim them?
Government projects are paid for by taxpayers.
They are not personal accomplishments that lawmakers can treat as political trophies.
Lacson has repeatedly questioned the practice of congressional budget insertions, including his disclosure in 2025 that senators had inserted billions of pesos worth of items into the national budget.
For Lacson, the solution is greater transparency and a stronger bottom-up process where LGU priorities are identified first and national funding follows.
THE X-FILES TAKE
The national budget should not be a political shopping list.
Let the LGUs identify the need. Let government agencies validate it. Let Congress scrutinize it. Then let the money follow the priority.
Not the other way around.
Because when politicians choose the projects first, the public is left asking the most important question:
Who is the budget really serving—the community, or the politician?
ia/xf
