JDV sees improved House-Senate relations

With Sen. Manny Villar Jr. slated to take over the Senate presidency from his colleague Franklin Drilon, congressmen led by Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. expressed hopes that relations between the Senate and the House of Representatives will "turn out for the better."

De Venecia said he will personally reach out to Villar to salvage what is left of the often adversarial relations between the two chambers of Congress.

De Venecia told reporters following the sine die adjournment of session Thursday night about repeated "efforts to reach out to them (the senators)," including the meeting of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) last month.

But still, he said, senators refused to cooperate on every initiative advanced by the congressmen.

De Venecia cited the stalemate on the 2006 national budget and Charter change.

"But with a new Senate leadership in place this July, we will continue to reach out to the other chamber. We can have another bicameral conference to revive discussion on constituent assembly in late July or early August," he said.

In his closing speech, De Venecia highlighted the need to shift the country’s US-style presidential system to a unicameral parliamentary government that would dissolve the Senate and fuse the two chambers into one collective legislative body.

De Venecia repeatedly mentioned the "futility of a two-house legislature" which, he said, has led to the present gridlock between the Senate and the House.

"My colleagues, this (presidential bicameral) system cannot continue. We have to break it, we have to dismantle it," De Venecia said in his speech.

He enumerated the number of House-approved measures that have gathered dust in the opposition-dominated Senate, which he said has done nothing but hold endless debates and inquiries.

"The list of bills ignored by the Senate is long. We can go on and on rattling off each title. And each one is further proof of the failure of the Senate — and of the utter futility and wastefulness of a two-house legislature," De Venecia said.

Of the 814 bills the House has approved, 802 of them are still "sleeping" in the Senate, disregarding 723 local measures that are deemed "unimportant" to the senators, and putting on the back burner 79 bills that are of national importance.

Among the House bills that remain pending are the Anti-Terrorism Act, the Bioethanol Fuel Act, the Billion Trees Act, Low Cost Housing Act, Anti-Smuggling Act, Investments Incentive Code, Land Registration Program and the Frontline Service Information Act.

De Venecia did not hide his displeasure over the Senate’s "gargantuan cut and massacre" of the P1-trillion national budget for 2006.

Senators slashed P64 billion from the spending program proposed for largely anti-poverty projects.

"These programs were not created yesterday or last week. They were identified years ago, and meticulously put in place after extensive consultations," he said.

With the resulting national budget gutted by "insensitive" senators, De Venecia said it would force congressmen to turn their back "on the poorest of our poor" among their constituents.

"To submit to what is politically expedient we regard as unacceptable," De Venecia said.

He said a reduction by as much as P10 billion could be forgivable but to effectively cut down the government’s capital spending and funds intended for anti-poverty programs in the country’s poorest regions was unjustified.