Former  speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez’s statement in a released video that the “command responsibility” over the budget lies with the executive department is rhetorically tidy, but it trims the process in ways that make his conclusion look stronger than it is.

The core move is to shift the center of accountability from design (legislation) to execution (implementation). That shift contains truths, but also some strategic omissions.

First, he is right about one foundational point: the budget is not the product of a single office. It begins as a proposal from the Executive, consolidated by the Department of Budget and Management, and implemented by executive agencies after enactment. He is also correct that Congress does not build roads, conduct procurement, or certify project completion. Those are executive functions. On that narrow question, invoking “command responsibility” within the Executive has logical grounding.

But the argument becomes selective when it treats implementation as the only meaningful site of corruption.

Romualdez draws a clean line: Congress approves, the Executive executes and therefore, corruption, especially large-scale corruption, must occur in execution. The problem is that this framing understates the power of Congress in shaping what gets executed in the first place.

Reconstructing the budget

Through amendments and insertions, legislators do not merely “approve” a budget. They reconstruct it. They decide which projects appear, which agencies receive funds, and how resources are distributed geographically and politically. These decisions are not administrative; they are deeply consequential. A project that exists in the General Appropriations Act exists because Congress allowed or insisted that it be there.

This is precisely why jurisprudence, particularly Belgica v. Ochoa, drew a hard line: Congress may determine what is funded, but must not control how funds are implemented after enactment. The ruling implicitly acknowledges that the power to decide “what” is funded (legislative power) is itself immense and vulnerable to abuse if used to channel resources toward questionable ends.

Romualdez’s statement sidesteps that vulnerability.

When he says the budget “does not begin in the House,” that is formally correct, but practically incomplete. The House is where the budget is most aggressively rewritten. By the time the General Appropriations Act emerges from bicameral reconciliation, it is no longer simply the Executive’s proposal. It is a negotiated document that is shaped heavily by legislative priorities, including insertions that may not have originated from the Executive at all.

So while Congress does not pour concrete, it decides where the concrete will be poured. That distinction matters.

His strongest rhetorical move is to equate “command responsibility” with operational control. By that definition, the Executive indeed carries heavier responsibility for corruption in procurement, project supervision, and implementation failures. But this is also a narrow definition, one that excludes upstream decisions that can predispose the system to abuse, such as the following:

1.  inserting poorly vetted or politically driven projects

2.  reallocating funds in ways that strain oversight capacity

3. shaping budgets that create opportunities for rent-seeking before implementation even begins

In other words, corruption does not only happen when money is spent. It can begin when money is allocated in certain ways.

There is also a subtle rhetorical deflection in the “no single person” argument. It is true that no one individual “commands” the entire budget process. But that does not automatically absolve leadership roles, especially one as powerful as the Speaker, from influence over how the House version of the budget is assembled. Leadership in a collegial body is not command in the military sense, but it is far from neutral.

Budget system as a chain

What the statement ultimately does is reframe the debate around locus of control: If corruption is defined as implementation failure, the Executive bears the burden. If corruption includes design choices that enable or incentivize misuse, then Congress cannot be excluded.

The reality is less convenient than either side suggests. The Philippine budget system is a chain, and accountability runs through its entire length:

1.  The Executive proposes and implements

2.  Congress reshapes and authorizes

3.  The judiciary defines the limits

Romualdez is correct to reject the idea that a single legislator, or even Congress alone, can be the sole “mastermind” of a complex, system-wide corruption scheme. But his argument goes too far in the other direction when it implies that legislative action is largely insulated from corruption risks. It isn’t.

A more complete and less self-serving account would acknowledge this: Corruption can occur in execution, where the Executive has command responsibility, but it can also be seeded in appropriation, where Congress exercises decisive, if not absolute, power.

By narrowing the frame to execution alone, the statement doesn’t just defend; it redefines where scrutiny should stop. And that, more than anything, is where its argument is most vulnerable. – Rappler.com

Raul F. Borjal is an alumnus of Ateneo de Manila University. He held  senior executive positions in various domestic and multinational companies, culminating in his retirement as vice president and corporate secretary of a Filipino-owned group of companies.