P-Noy foils Congress fast break

There was no question in my mind the Congress-approved bill that seeks to increase by P2,000 the monthly pension for retired members of the Social Security System (SSS) would end up in presidential veto. President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III officially informed the respective leaders of both chambers of the 16th Congress why he could not in conscience approve into law this obvious populist measure.

Three days before it could either be signed or lapse into law, Malacañang sent back to the Senate and the House of Representatives the enrolled bill on the proposed P2,000 hike with the presidential veto message instead. The bill languished in the Palace since December 15 after being transmitted for approval into law by President Aquino.

In his veto message sent on Jan. 12 to Senate President Franklin Drilon and Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., the Chief Executive explained in detailed actuarial computations and analysis presented to him by his economic advisers, including his appointees at the SSS, the impact of passing into law this proposed pension hike. The President was warned this across-the-board increase in monthly pension would endanger the financial viability, if not result in collapse of the state pension fund for private sector workers in the nearest future.

There are a little over 33 million card-bearing SSS members, 2.5 million of them pensioners as of latest count. The total membership includes the private sector and the self-employed. We contribute to the state pension funds in our SSS premium being deducted from our monthly take-home pay.

As SSS members, these monthly contributions will secure our future when we retire from our jobs and become pensioners as well. So it is but self-preservation for us to support this presidential veto that will help keep for now the financial health and viability of the SSS.

There is no point to begrudge President Aquino who merely followed what is the right thing to do in having vetoed this measure. Its passage into law will certainly unduly shorten the actuarial life of the state pension fund. We can fault him though for not having appointed good administrators at the SSS.

These SSS administrators apparently failed to make wise investments out of the fund to make them grow instead of just letting them lay idle and earning nothing for SSS members. Or worse, they made bad investment decisions that we, as SSS members including pensioners, were now dearly paying for. 

Other than being not graft-prone, his appointees at the SSS should have been competent and efficient in managing our state pension funds to grow from secured-yielding investments. Had there been more professional fund managers at the SSS, such pension increases could have been granted no less by the President himself each year out of investment earnings.

The proposed House Bill 5842 sought to amend Section 12 of Republic Act No. 1661, or the Social Security System Act of 1997. Militant party-list representative from Bayan Muna, Neri Colmenares principally authored HB 5842 which he was able to steer to approval at the House on June 9 last year.

Incidentally, Colmenares is running for senator in the coming May 9 elections. The enactment of HB 5842 would have been a good campaign boost to his Senate bid.

Reacting to the presidential veto, Colmenares gave the lamest excuse for pushing into law his pet bill. “They (Palace) are saying that it would shorten the life of the pension fund to 2029. But that is if there are no new contributions, there is no increase in contributions and the present invested assets, which amount to tens of billions of pesos, do not earn,” he pointed out.

From his own words, he wants us SSS members who are still working to absorb the pension hike by further increasing our monthly contributions.

My mother receives her measly monthly pension as a widow of my late father as a former SSS member. She is not complaining. But she is happy her pension grew through the years from increases granted by former Presidents Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

More than five years of the Aquino administration, my mother’s SSS pension stagnated at P3,723 a month since July 2010. Thus, the authors of this bill in Congress would still be able to squeeze a good campaign issue out of the presidential veto.

Disguised as populist, the vetoed bill would make P-Noy a convenient bashing figure for candidate-sponsors of the measure.

There is no counterpart measure of HB 5842 from any Senate bills. But the Senate adopted the House version en toto on November 9, or five months later. Sen. Cynthia Villar sponsored the measure as chairperson of the Senate committee on government corporations and public enterprises.

Villar said yesterday she worked tediously and studied the bill carefully and stands by her Senate committee report that “the additional P2,000 can be given without putting the stability of the SSS fund in jeopardy.”

I would like to believe her views, being a finance wizard herself as evidenced by the growth of their family-owned and operated real estate empire with husband, ex-Senate president Manny Villar. But she is not a candidate in this election. But their son, incumbent Las Piñas City Rep. Mark Villar, one of the co-authors of HB 5842, is running for re-election in Congress.

P-Noy still enjoys high popularity rating based from the results of the last quarterly surveys of both Pulse Asia and the Social Weather Stations (SWS). Therefore, he has a comfort level of trust and approval rating enough to sustain him in his remaining months in office.

The Palace veto of the SSS pension hike bill would, to some extent, lose popularity points for the outgoing President. P-Noy’s having foiled this fast break by those in Congress using this populist bill to win votes would be remembered though in good stead by whoever succeeds him in office.