Early career and entry to politics

Abad had been a trade unionist of the Federation of Free Workers and Ateneo Workers College from 1976 to 1979 and was research director of Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs. When the Congress of the Philippines was restored in 1987, Abad launched his successful congressional bid to represent the Lone District of Batanes where he became a staunch advocate of agrarian reform in the national legislature. He held the position until his appointment to his brief stint as Secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform and ran again for Congress in 1995, completing his third and final term in 2004.

National politics

In July 2004, then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appointed Abad as Secretary of the Department of Education. The removal of "culture" and "sports" from the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) was his proposal, in line with the thinking that the department's focus should solely be on basic education. To streamline operations, he championed the institutionalization of three agencies for the different educational levels: DepEd for elementary and secondary education, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for tertiary education, and the Technology Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for technical and vocational education.

Amid calls for the resignation of Arroyo due to her links to the Hello Garci scandal in 2004, Abad resigned his post and became a critic of the former president.^[2] He served as the campaign manager of the Liberal Party in the 2010 presidential elections, where the party standard-bearer Benigno Aquino III, then a senator, won the race. Aquino appointed him Budget Secretary when the former assumed the presidency on June 30, 2010.

Abad is the architect of the Disbursement Acceleration Program. This program later declared by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional was used to siphon money from the programs set by the General Appropriations Act. Later it was revealed that money from DAP was used to bribe congressmen and senators to wrongfully convict and impeach the late Chief Justice Renato Corona.