Having lived in the Philippines and the U.S. I have this observation. The U.S. is not more or less corrupt that the Philippines. They just do it with more _style_. By that I mean, they are just better at hiding it.
Rather than compare anecdotes though, look at some actual data: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/
(USA is ranked 17; Philippines is 105. Lower is better.)