Arroyo disowns bid to pad Pampanga flood control funding in 2026 budget

Pampanga 2nd Dist. Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Tuesday revealed supposed attempts to pad with “several hundreds of millions” of funding allotted for her district in the proposed 2026 General Appropriations Bill, which the House of Representatives approved last month.

In a statement, Arroyo clarified that the item had been deleted by the House appropriations committee from the approved version of House Bill 4058, or the General Appropriations Bill (GAB).

Arroyo said she had no involvement in the attempt to secure additional funding for her district.

“During the discussions on the committee amendments to the House GAB for 2026, we were informed of an attempt to allocate several hundreds of millions of flood control funds to the 2nd district of Pampanga,” she said.

“We were not the ones who introduced that proposed allocation,” Arroyo stressed.

The Pampanga lawmaker, however, did not say who she believed was behind the alleged inclusion of additional funding.

“We thank the [House] appropriations committee for removing it in the committee report,” she said.

GMA News Online sought Arroyo’s congressional office for specific amounts and other details on the attempted padding and will publish their response once it is given.

The House of Representatives approved on third and final reading its version of the proposed P6.793 trillion national budget for 2026, with realignments that increased allocations to the education sector to an unprecedented P1.28 trillion.—MCG, GMA Integrated News