Efforts of the leadership of the House of Representatives to pass the proposed P401-billion Bayanihan 3 law had gone to waste given the lukewarm response of the President’s economic managers and senators to the measure, a legislator said Saturday.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said the “apparently crappy working relationship” between the House on one end and Malacañang and the Senate on the other explained what he described as the “Bayanihan 3 fiasco.”
Opposition Senator Leila de Lima also questioned and described as “misplaced” the insertion of the payment of police, military, and other uniformed personnel pensions under the Bayanihan to Arise As One Act or the Bayanihan 3 bill.
In a statement on Saturday, De Lima said the insertion was “repulsively misplaced” in a proposed legislative measure that is supposed to help Filipinos “paddle through the waves of an ongoing pandemic.”
“It is reassuring to know that the most-needed wage subsidies, allowance for teachers, and aid for the agri-fishery sector or ayuda is coming their way,” she said.
The House leadership, Villafuerte said, should have known the sentiments of Malacañang and the Senate before pushing this measure.
The bill “could end up gathering dust in the legislative mill because of the seemingly lousy coordination between the House of Representatives, on one end, and the Office of the President and Senate, on other, on what further COVID response measures are necessary in the face of the lingering pandemic,” he added.
Villafuerte, a member of the House Independent Bloc formed by erstwhile Speaker and Taguig Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano, stressed: “The House-approved Bayanihan 3 bill is not likely to see the light of day as our economic managers and senators are cool to the P401-billion stimulus package.”
“Worse, even the President’s own spokesman — Secretary Herminio Roque Jr. — said Bayanihan 3 was not an urgent measure.”
Villafuerte was dismayed that proponents of the Bayanihan 3 bill excluded the key proposal to provide a one-time P10,000 cash aid to poor families.
He also said the third and final reading approval of the Bayanihan 3 bill was “half-baked” for it was passed even if it lacked the constitutional requirement of obtaining a certificate of availability of funds from the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr).
He recalled that even House Deputy Speaker Isidro Ungab, a former House appropriations committee chairman, had warned proponents of Bayanihan 3 bill that without a certificate of actual cash availability from the Treasury, the measure would go the way of other appropriations laws that have not been implemented because the Congress had written them without first assuring the funding source.
The Bayanihan 3 bill, which was approved by the House on final reading on June 1, has not moved an inch in the Senate, Villafuerte said.
The Senate’s counterpart measure has not been tackled at the committee level. Villafuerte recalled that as early as February this year, Malacañang already showed its tepid response to the Bayanihan 3 bill, with Roque saying that it could only be passed if the government still had available funds for the multibillion-peso measure.
Roque later said the country’s economic managers have assured Malacañang that enough available funds from the 2021 national budget and the Bayanihan to Recover As One Act or Bayanihan 2 would be able to sustain the government’s Covid-19 response and economic recovery efforts.
Meanwhile, De Lima said: “It is shocking to know that of the P401-billion fund under Bayanihan 3, there is an insertion that is not in the original version submitted by lawmakers in Congress. Why is there a P54.6-billion for the pension of the military and police? What kind of gimmick is this?”
Marikina City Rep. Stella Quimbo earlier revealed the proposed Bayanihan 3 law includes a P54.6 billion pension and gratuity fund for retired military and uniformed personnel.
Quimbo said this was requested by the Department of Budget and Management. The lawmaker explained that the amount was slashed in 2020 and needed to be restored because it is owed to retired MUPs.
De Lima, however, questioned the timing of giving the pension for the retired military and police.
“Why now? And what good will this even do when the government knows it’s already cash-strapped enough as it is?” she asked.
“Just to be clear, in case the minions of Mr. Duterte have forgotten or are too preoccupied with trying to please a particular political party, we are dealing with a health crisis,” De Lima stressed.
She asked: “Medical solutions, not military ones’ is our incessant battlecry. Disease, hunger, and poverty are our enemies. Pension has nothing to do with that, right? What is really their priority?”
The senator said the “stealthy move” was further proof of the Duterte government’s misplaced priorities.