A Philippine court ordered the arrest of former House Speaker Martin Romualdez — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s own cousin — after prosecutors say he pocketed $118 million in kickbacks from flood-control projects, and the question Americans should be asking is how much of that money came out of our pockets.
Romualdez stands accused of amassing 7.4 billion pesos through "commissions, commitment fees, bribes and other illicit payments" on projects awarded between 2022 and 2025, according to Reuters. The scale is staggering: nearly 10,000 flood-control projects worth $9 billion are now under scrutiny, and investigators found many were substandard, overpriced, or never built at all, the Associated Press reported. The Philippines gets pummeled by roughly 20 typhoons a year. The infrastructure was supposed to save lives. Instead, it allegedly made elites rich.
Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla told reporters the theft was so large that conspirators tried to hide it by purchasing multiple houses — and by donating $1 million to Harvard University. That detail, reported by AP and SFGATE but buried deep in both, deserves more attention. Allegedly stolen foreign funds laundered through an American Ivy League endowment, and nobody in our press corps thinks that's the lead?
Reuters framed the story around Marcos's anti-corruption vows and his claim that he is "not the president of my family." AP and SFGATE ran nearly identical copy emphasizing the typhoon vulnerability and the widening dragnet. None of the three outlets touched the question that matters most to the American reader: what slice of that $9 billion spending spree came from U.S. foreign assistance?
The Philippines has received hundreds of millions in American aid in recent years. The U.S. has funneled money toward governance programs, disaster resilience, and infrastructure in the country. Yet not one of these outlets traces the dollar chain back to the American taxpayer. That is not an oversight — it is a habit. The establishment press treats foreign aid as a background condition, never as a choice that competes with domestic needs.
Romualdez's lawyer, Ade Fajardo, says his client will face the charges and asked only for "the same due process and fair hearing guaranteed to every Filipino." That is more due process than the American taxpayer ever gets when Congress ships money overseas with no strings and no audits.
The dragnet is widening. Former Rep. Zaldy Co, who chaired the House appropriations committee, is now a fugitive who fled to Europe, AP reported. A sitting senator, a former senator, government engineers, and construction executives are detained. Marcos's own executive secretary and his budget and public works ministers resigned or were fired. Under Philippine law, plunder is non-bailable.
Good for Manila. But until someone in Washington demands a full accounting of how much American money flowed through these rigged projects, the real mark in this con isn't the Filipino taxpayer — it's us.
Every dollar sent abroad without an ironclad audit trail is a dollar that didn't fix a bridge in Ohio, didn't shore up a levee in Missouri, didn't replace lead pipes in Michigan. The Philippines can clean its own house. It's past time we cleaned ours.
