HOW CAN I be the mastermind? I was the former speaker of the House of Representatives. But the House of Representatives is only part of one branch of government: the legislature. The national budget is not conceived, executed, implemented, bid out, supervised, and completed by one congressman or even by Congress alone. And certainly not by the speaker of the House.
Congress does not build flood control projects. Congress does not conduct procurement. Congress does not inspect whether a project was actually completed. Congress does not certify whether the work done was substandard or not.
I want to make this simple and clear. The national budget does not depend on just one person. The budget does not begin in the House. It begins in the Executive. The agencies prepare their proposals, the Executive consolidates them into the National Expenditure Program, and that program is then submitted to Congress.
From there, the House deliberates. But the House is not one person, and it is certainly not the speaker alone. It is a collegial body made up of hundreds of members, multiple committees, vice chairs, and institutional processes. In fact, there are around 85 committees, each with its own jurisdiction, leadership, and members. No speaker can personally control every committee, much less direct the actions of other branches or government agencies.
The budget deliberation does not stop in the House. The Senate also conducts its own deliberations, reviews its own version, and plays its own role in shaping the final budget. It is not a bystander. It is an active constitutional participant in the process. After that, the House and the Senate reconcile their versions in the bicameral conference committee. Only then is the final bill transmitted to the president for approval or veto.
If corruption were to occur, in a magnitude made known to us over the past months, then it’s clear that real corruption does not happen at the level of general legislative approval alone. It happens at the level of execution of the General Appropriations Act. It happens when projects are implemented. It happens where projects are actually implemented, where procurement is undertaken, where monetary disbursements are actually made, and it happens when substandard projects are passed off as legitimate.
That is why command responsibility is far more logically relevant in the Executive branch, where there is actual supervision, operational control, and implementation on the ground, than in a collegial legislative body whose constitutional role is deliberation and appropriation.
(Culled from video statement of the former House Speaker released on April 21, 2026)
