1) Constitutional foundation and place in the lawmaking process

In the Philippine constitutional design, the President’s veto is a check on the legislative power of Congress and a built-in stage of the lawmaking process. A bill does not become a statute until it has either (a) been approved by the President, (b) survived a valid veto override, or (c) taken effect by the President’s inaction within the constitutionally fixed period.

The legal basis is Article VI, Section 27 of the 1987 Constitution, which provides:

Section 27(1). Every bill passed by the Congress shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President. If he approves the same, he shall sign it; otherwise, he shall veto it and return the same with his objections to the House where it originated, which shall enter the objections at large in its Journal and proceed to reconsider it. If, after such reconsideration, two-thirds of all the Members of such House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of all the Members of that House, it shall become a law. In all such cases the votes of each House shall be determined by yeas or nays, and the names of the Members voting for or against shall be entered in its Journal. The President shall communicate his veto of any bill to the House where it originated within thirty days after the date of receipt thereof; otherwise, it shall become a law as if he had signed it.

Section 27(2). The President shall have the power to veto any particular item or items in an appropriation, revenue, or tariff bill, but the veto shall not affect the item or items to which he does not object.

Two immediate points follow from the text:

The veto is a constitutional power with a constitutional procedure; and
The Constitution recognizes (a) a general/total veto and (b) an item veto—and sets strict conditions for both.

2) Presentment: when the veto power attaches

a) What must be presented

The veto power attaches only after “every bill passed by the Congress” is presented to the President. In practice, what is presented is the enrolled bill—the final authenticated version transmitted to Malacañang after Congress completes bicameral action.

b) The 30-day action period (and why it matters)

The President has 30 days from receipt to do one of two things:

Approve by signing; or
Veto by returning the bill with written objections to the House of origin and communicating the veto within the 30 days.

If the President does nothing within the 30-day period, the bill becomes law “as if he had signed it.”

Philippine law therefore does not recognize a “pocket veto.” In systems with a pocket veto, a bill can be killed by inaction when the legislature is not able to receive a return veto. The Philippine Constitution forecloses that by making inaction an approval by operation of law after 30 days.

3) Types of presidential veto recognized in Philippine constitutional law

A. General (total) veto: the “return veto”

This is the classic veto described in Section 27(1):

The President disapproves the entire bill.
The President returns it to the House where it originated, accompanied by objections.
Unless Congress musters the supermajority override in both Houses, the bill does not become law.

Key characteristics

All-or-nothing: the President cannot “edit” a regular bill.
Written objections are essential: the veto is constitutionally a communication of reasons and a trigger for reconsideration.
Time-bound: must be communicated within 30 days from receipt.

B. Item veto: partial disapproval in specified fiscal bills

Section 27(2) grants a narrower but potent power: the President may veto “any particular item or items” in an:

Appropriation bill (including the General Appropriations Act and supplemental appropriations),
Revenue bill (taxation and other measures raising revenue), or
Tariff bill (customs duties and related imposts).

Effect of a valid item veto

The non-vetoed items become law (assuming the bill is otherwise approved or becomes law by lapse of time).
The vetoed items are treated as not enacted, unless Congress overrides the veto as to those items.

Why the item veto exists Appropriation and revenue measures often bundle many discrete fiscal decisions into one statute. Without an item veto, a President would face a blunt choice: accept an entire budget/tax measure (including objectionable parts) or veto the whole and risk fiscal disruption. The item veto is meant to allow surgical disapproval—but only within defined limits.

4) What the Philippine system does not allow: “quasi-vetoes” and veto-by-revision

Because the Constitution is explicit about how veto works, several practices sometimes seen elsewhere do not have independent legal effect in the Philippines:

No pocket veto (inaction after 30 days enacts the bill).
No “conditional veto” as a third option (the President cannot approve subject to conditions that change the statute).
No “amendatory veto” (the President cannot rewrite text and make the revised version law; the veto is a power to reject, not to legislate).
No “line-item reduction” as a separate constitutional power (the President may veto an item; reducing amounts or rewriting allocations to create a new scheme is not what Section 27(2) authorizes).

A President may issue statements expressing reservations, interpretations, or implementation preferences, but a signed bill is law as written, and any “signing statement” cannot legally function as a veto or amendment.

5) Limits on the veto power

The President’s veto authority is substantial, but it is tightly cabined by time, form, subject matter, and the meaning of “item.”

A. Temporal limit: the 30-day rule is mandatory

The President must communicate the veto within 30 days from receipt. Missing the deadline means the bill becomes law automatically. The 30-day period is a core anti-pocket-veto safeguard.

B. Formal/procedural limits: objections + return to the proper House

For a valid veto under Section 27(1), the President must:

Return the bill to the House where it originated, and
Provide objections (the constitutional trigger for reconsideration), and
Do so within 30 days.

Congress, for its part, must:

Enter the objections at large in its Journal,
Reconsider the bill, and
Vote by yeas and nays, recording names in the Journal.

These procedural steps matter because an override is constitutionally framed as a recorded, deliberate supermajority act, not an informal political response.

C. Substantive limits: the President cannot legislate through veto

A veto is constitutionally a negative power. Even with item veto authority, the President cannot use the veto to:

create a new policy not enacted by Congress,
remove text in a way that reverses the meaning of what remains, or
“blue-pencil” a provision so that the law becomes something Congress did not vote for.

This limitation is especially important in fiscal legislation, where vetoing a restriction while leaving money available can transform the legislative bargain.

D. Limits unique to the item veto: what counts as an “item”?

The Constitution uses the term “item or items” but does not define it. In Philippine legal practice, the controlling idea is that an “item” is a distinct, severable fiscal allocation or imposition that Congress can reasonably be understood to have voted on as a separable unit.

In appropriation law, an item is typically understood as a specific appropriation of money for a stated purpose (e.g., a program, project, or activity with an amount), not merely a phrase or sub-clause that, once deleted, alters the conditions of release or the structure of the appropriation.

Practical consequence:

The President may veto an appropriation item—but should not be able to veto only the condition attached to that item if doing so would leave the appropriation standing in a form Congress did not approve.
The President may veto riders or “inappropriate provisions” in fiscal bills to the extent they are not proper items of appropriation/revenue/tariff legislation and are severable, but that power is not a license to reshape policy architecture beyond the bounds of Section 27(2).

E. Subject-matter limits: item veto only for appropriation, revenue, or tariff bills

Outside those categories, the President cannot partially veto. Regular bills are subject only to the total veto option.

Because revenue and appropriation bills must originate in the House of Representatives (Article VI, Section 24), the House is often the House of origin for fiscal measures returned with veto objections—though the Senate can propose amendments and must still vote on overrides.

F. Measures generally not subject to presidential veto

The veto is a presentment-based power over bills intended to become laws. Several significant congressional actions are typically not “bills” in that sense, and thus are not within the veto mechanism as such, including:

Proposals to amend or revise the Constitution by Congress acting under Article XVII (commonly done by resolution rather than a bill presented for signature),
Senate concurrence in treaties, which is an exclusive Senate act rather than an enacted “law,”
Impeachment proceedings, which are constitutionally assigned functions of the House (to initiate) and Senate (to try) rather than ordinary legislation.

A caution is necessary in practice: legislation that is related to these actions (for example, statutes setting procedures, appropriations, or implementing frameworks) may still be a bill and therefore subject to the usual presentment/veto rules.

6) Congressional override: how a veto is reversed

A presidential veto is not final if Congress can gather the constitutionally required supermajority.

A. The threshold: two-thirds of all Members (not merely those present)

Override requires two-thirds of all the Members of the House of origin, and then two-thirds of all the Members of the other House. This is deliberately hard. It is a constitutional design choice that treats a veto as a serious institutional objection that should be overcome only by broad legislative consensus.

B. The sequence

House of origin receives the veto and objections.
The House of origin reconsiders and votes. If two-thirds of all Members vote to pass,
The bill (or vetoed items) is sent with the objections to the other House.
The other House also reconsiders. If two-thirds of all Members vote to approve,
The bill (or item) becomes law.

C. Override of an item veto

The Constitution’s override mechanism applies to vetoes generally, and the logic extends to item vetoes: Congress may override the veto as to the specific items vetoed, provided each House meets the two-thirds of all Members requirement through the constitutionally recorded vote.

D. What happens after a successful override

Once an override succeeds, the measure becomes law by constitutional command. The President’s further participation is not required.

7) Judicial review: when courts can examine a veto

While veto and override are political-branch functions, questions about constitutional compliance—especially whether an asserted “item veto” is truly a veto of an “item,” or whether it is an impermissible rewriting—can be framed as justiciable constitutional issues.

In Philippine practice, litigation involving veto power most commonly arises in the context of the General Appropriations Act or other complex fiscal enactments, where disputes focus on:

whether the President vetoed a true item or merely excised language to create a different legal result;
whether the vetoed portion was severable or integral to the item;
whether the veto was used to strike “inappropriate provisions” (riders) embedded in fiscal legislation; and
whether the formal requirements—communication, timing, return, recorded votes—were observed.

Courts generally avoid substituting policy judgment for that of the political branches, but they can police the boundaries of what the Constitution permits the veto to do.

8) The veto in the budget system: why appropriation vetoes are uniquely consequential

A. The General Appropriations Act (GAA) as the main arena

The GAA is the government’s annual spending law and is typically the most detailed and politically negotiated statute of any fiscal year. Item veto power gives the President leverage over:

discrete allocations (programs/projects/activities),
budgetary restrictions and conditions, and
riders that attempt to legislate policy through appropriation language.

B. Reenacted budget rule if no appropriations law takes effect

The Constitution contains a continuity mechanism in Article VI, Section 25(7): if Congress fails to pass the general appropriations bill for the ensuing fiscal year by the end of any fiscal year, the previous year’s appropriations law is deemed reenacted and remains in force until a new GAA is passed. The policy objective is to avoid paralysis in government operations.

While that provision speaks in terms of congressional failure to pass the GAA, the broader operational point remains: if a new appropriations law does not take effect on time—whether because the political branches fail to complete enactment or because a total veto is not overridden—government finance can be forced into continuity/stopgap modes, increasing the practical stakes of veto decisions.

C. Why “item” disputes are common in GAAs

GAAs contain not only amounts but also special provisions: conditions on releases, limitations, reporting requirements, and cross-references to administrative authority. The legal tension is predictable:

Congress uses conditions to control how funds are used;
the President may view some conditions as encroachments on executive implementation or as riders;
the Constitution allows item vetoes but forbids using them as an executive editing pen to produce a different bargain.

The core principle that emerges in practice is that the veto should be exercised in a way that rejects separable items (or separable inappropriate provisions) rather than transforming enacted items into something else.

9) Operational consequences of veto choices

A. If the President signs a bill (no veto)

The bill becomes law, subject to constitutional requirements on effectivity (typically publication and lapse of the statutory period, unless the law provides otherwise consistent with constitutional publication requirements).

B. If the President vetoes a bill and Congress does not override

The bill does not become law.
Congress may refile a revised bill, negotiate amendments, or abandon the proposal.

C. If the President item-vetoes an appropriation/revenue/tariff bill

The non-vetoed parts can take effect (depending on the bill’s enactment path),
The vetoed items are legally inoperative,
Congress may attempt an override or may enact replacement items in later legislation (e.g., supplemental appropriations).

10) Key rules distilled

General veto: President rejects the whole bill; must return it with objections to the House of origin within 30 days.
Automatic enactment by inaction: If the President does not communicate a veto within 30 days, the bill becomes law as if signed.
Item veto: Available only in appropriation, revenue, or tariff bills; veto of one item does not affect the rest.
No veto-by-rewrite: The President cannot use the veto to amend or reshape a bill into a different law.
Override: Requires two-thirds of all Members of each House, voting by yeas and nays and recording names in the Journal.
Judicial boundary-policing: Courts may review whether an asserted item veto is constitutionally valid and whether the veto complied with constitutional form and limits.