The Senate members of the bicameral conference committee—bicam for short—on the 2016 budget of the Department of Health recently demonstrated anew why the bicam is called the third house of Congress. The Senators in question included Senator Vicente Sotto III and Senator Loren Legarda, who is the chairperson of the upper chamber’s committee on finance.
It is easy to understand why the need for bicams exists. In virtually all cases, the two Constitutionally created chambers of Congress—the Senate and the House of Representatives—pass bills on an issue that differ in content and the bills have to be reconciled so as to embody the common intent of the two chambers. Upon ratification by the entire Senate and the entire House of Representatives, the measure approved by the bicam is sent to the President of the Philippines for signature.
The demonstration that Senators Sotto and Legarda and their Senate colleagues in the 2015 DOH bicam was that legislation is a two-part exercise. The first part is crafting a measure for conversion into law by a Presidential signature (or a lapsing into law if the Chief Executive does not act on the measure within 30 days). The second part of the legislative exercise, which comes into play after a measure has become law, is approving a General Appropriations Act provision to give effect to the intention of Congress in passing the measure. Without an appropriation in the national budget, a law will wither on the vine. It cannot be implemented.
The Senator members of the 2015 DOH budget bicam apparently believe in a saying that is popular in tennis (and probably other sports too). The saying is: “It isn’t over till it’s over.” For Senator Sotto what wasn’t over was the fight over the passage of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act (RPRHA) of 2012, which provides for the “inclusion in the Philippine National Drug Formulary of non-abortifacient, legal and medically safe hormonal contraceptives, intrauterine devices, injectables and other family planning products and supplies.” Senator Sotto was fiercely opposed to the passage of RPRHA, which was principally sponsored in the Senate by Pia Cayetano. For Tito Sotto the game wasn’t over. He would lay in wait and would ambush RPRHA when an opportunity presented itself.
In time the opportunity presented itself. That was the bicam deliberations on the 2016 GAA for the DOH which necessarily included the RPRHA budget.
With the support of Senator Legarda, Senator Sotto sought the removal of the P1-billion appropriation for family planning supplies and services from the 2016 DOH budget. Between the two of them, Tito Sotto and Loren Legarda effectively contracepted—if there is such a word—DOH’s RPRHA activities in 2016. Sen. Legarda, who apparently fancies herself as an expert in security matters, has indicated that the P1 billion intended for RPRHA had been diverted to the Department of National Defense (DND) for West Philippine Sea-related expenditures.
Assuming that no anti-RPRHA sentiment was involved, this begs the question: Did the additional funding for DND have to be taken from DOH’s family planning budget?
But that is not the key question raised by the removal of the P1-billion family planning appropriation from the 2016 DOH budget. The key question is, is slashing appropriations so as to render disliked laws ineffective the Constitutionally proper role of bicams? The Constitution speaks of the Senate and the House of Representative—two legislative bodies—crafting bills that are in due course reconciled and sent to the President of the Philippines for signing into law. There is no provision in the Basic Law for a third legislative body that amends laws through the GAA process.
Yet, the record will show that bicams have been known to remove from, or insert into, bicam-agenda items provisions that were not in the texts of the measures approved by either or both chambers. The bicams have struck before.
In the case of DOH’s 2016 family planning budget, the third Congressional chamber clearly has struck again.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com