With a newly elected Speaker in place, the House of Representatives resumed its session Tuesday and promptly rescinded its approval on second reading of the 2021 national budget.
Pampanga Rep. Juan Pablo Bondoc filed a motion to recall the second reading approval of House Bill 7727 or the 2021 general appropriations bill, a motion that was later carried.
As of presstime, lawmakers were only discussing the Department of Social Welfare and Development's allocation for next year, as the session proceeded smoothly without the expected tensions from the rival factions of the House.
Newly elected Speaker Lord Allan Velasco presided over the session as lawmakers heeded the call of President Rodrigo Duterte to hold a special session from Oct. 13 to 16 to ensure the timely passage of the budget bill.
Based on the schedule of deliberations prepared by the House committee on appropriations, the four-day special session will tackle the proposed budgets for the Commission on Audit, the Civil Service Commission and the DSWD and its attached agencies.
On Oct. 6, former speaker and Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano suspended the session until Nov. 16 and moved to approve the budget on second reading, even though the budgets of some executive agencies had not yet been tackled.
The move, widely seen as a maneuver to prevent Velasco from taking over as speaker under a term-sharing agreement, threatened to delay the passage of the spending plan, however, as the House would only be able to pass the budget on third and final reading in November, giving the Senate little time to work on its own version.
To avoid further delays, the President called on Congress to hold a special session to complete deliberations on the budget on time.
“We will go back to second reading and we will finish the second and third reading on Friday,” said ACT CIS Rep. Eric Yap, chairman of the House committee on appropriations.
As soon as the budget bill is approved on final reading, the House will transmit it to the Senate. Any differences in the two versions of the bill will be ironed out in bicameral conference committee deliberations.
Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, chairman of the House ways and means committee, said the House leadership under Velasco will be a “modernizing force for governance.”
Salceda, who drafted the new speaker’s socioeconomic legislative agenda, said Velasco would bring reforms into the fast lane.
“The new speaker is a workhorse, not a show-horse. He has very little appetite for political theatrics, and that attitude will spill over to us in his leadership team,” Salceda said in a statement.
“This is a young country, so it is apt that we are led by someone who has the benefit of both youth and experience. Most of us in the leadership team will be older than the speaker. Our attitudes and views are constrained by the past. The new sSpeaker will keep reminding us to look to the future,” Salceda added.
The Palace said the President was “very optimistic” that the budget would be passed on time, now that the leadership issue has been settled.
In a statement, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the both Cayetano and Velasco agreed to work together as one majority to ensure the timely passage of the 2021 budget and other priority legislation of the Duterte administration.
Duterte met with Velasco and Cayetano early Tuesday afternoon, hours after Velasco was sworn in as the new speaker at the Batasan Complex in Quezon City.
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The Palace official thanked the two lawmakers for heeding the President’s call to set aside politics and focus on the passage of the 2021 budget, which contains funds for the government’s COVID-19 response and recovery efforts.
“I think the message was received by everyone that the President really needed the early passage of the proposed 2021 budget. If the two did not agree, the row between them will take longer and affect the budget,” Roque said.
“It is very very clear that at the time of COVID, it is not the time to hold the passage of the budget. And we thank the House of Representatives for that,” Roque added.
Earlier, the President threatened to intervene if the lawmakers would not resolve their leadership impasse and pass the budget on time.
Senate finance committee chairman Senator Juan Edgardo Angara appealed to the congressmen to approve next year’s budget bill so it can be transmitted to them for scrutiny.
Angara said the senators were ready to hold a special session if needed to pass the budget, which is seen as crucial for the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senator Imee Marcos also said the Senate is prepared to reschedule sessions.
Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto, meanwhile, praised Cayetano, saying managed to push through legislation that the Palace requested, and worked well with his former colleagues in the Senate.
“I am writing this to thank him for his service to the nation as House leader. Old school it may sound, but in this age when the new is hailed and the old is forgotten, I believe that the courtesy of appreciating the good a person had done should continue as an honored tradition,” Recto said.
Cayetano, a former senator, thanked Recto for the “warm and sincere appreciation” of his hard work and performance as House Speaker for more than a year.
“I appreciate Senator Recto’s assessment of our work in the House of the People. It was indeed short but we were able to maximise it for the people’s benefit,” Cayetano said in a statement.
Cayetano was referring to a statement Recto had issued on Tuesday describing his term as House Speaker as “short but spectacular.”
"He passed all the bills the Palace requested, plus those which are products of the House’s policy ingenuity, which he harnessed in full," Recto said in a statement released on the same day Cayetano tendered his irrevocable resignation as House Speaker.
Cayetano said the past 15 months of his Speakership “have been challenging yet very fulfilling because we were able to lay the foundations of transforming the House of Representatives to become the House of the people.”
“I am optimistic that Senator Recto and I as well as our colleagues in the House of Representatives can continue to work in support of our distressed Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), including those repatriated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.
