The ‘third’ Congress

Either or both chambers of Congress can initiate proposed bills that are put forward at the legislation mills. In most cases, there are differing versions of a bill as approved. One bill passed upon by Congress can be different from the one approved in the Senate, or vice-versa.

 If there are certain differences, a bicameral conference committee, or bicam for short, is convened to reconcile conflicting provisions of both versions of the same bill as approved separately by the Senate and by the House of Representatives. But the final version of any bill has to be ratified by both bodies before it can proceed to become law.

Thus, the bicam has come to be called as the “third Congress” where the penultimate stage of lawmaking takes place behind closed-door meetings to work out a consolidated version of the bill.

Two major administration bills before the 17th Congress are among those now at the bicam stage. These are the proposed General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2018, or the budget bill, and the proposed Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) bill.

As of press time yesterday, the two bills were set to be reported out for plenary voting. Barring any last-minute dramatic attempts to block and derail approval of the two bills, the political allies of President Duterte are expected to ratify both bills at the Senate and at the Lower House.

The proposed 2018 budget bill was taken by the bicam co-chaired by Sen. Loren Legarda, as head of the Senate committee on finance, and House committee on appropriations led by Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles. On the other hand, the TRAIN bill was consolidated by the Senate committee on ways and means chaired by Sen. Sonny Angara and his counterpart, House committee on ways and means Quirino Province Rep. Dakila Carlo Cua. 

Nograles disclosed that President Duterte is scheduled to sign the budget bill into law on Dec. 19 or on Tuesday. Obviously, there was not much debate and quarrel among the lawmakers at the bicam. The red flags against pork-barrel-like allocations in the 2018 GAA bill earlier raised by Sen. Panfilo Lacson were apparently settled amicably among themselves at the bicam. On the other hand, the TRAIN bill is more problematic and more controversial.

According to Angara, their bicam agreed on at least 75 issues on the much-debated TRAIN bill. In his Instagram account, Angara even posted a photo of him along with some of the members of the bicam with Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III.

“The bicameral conference composed of the House and Senate has agreed on at least 75 issues/provisions of the Train bill on tax reform. After hours of debates and exchanges of data and statistics from both Senate and House as well as the Dept. of Finance, it seems that we are close to concluding this landmark measure,” Angara posted at his Instagram.

Whatever those differences that remained were already resolved quietly yesterday at the bicam. What these were, we don’t know exactly. These matters were debated between and discussed among the bicam members only, in consultation with Dominguez and the rest of Finance Department officials involved in the process.

Dominguez appears to be happy and satisfied on how the final version of the TRAIN bill turned out at the bicam when I saw him on television news yesterday. He proudly declared the soon-to-become law is the “first ever delivered” tax reform package and that it was only the Duterte administration that was able to come up with it.

In particular, Dominguez cited, the government will no longer collect taxes from some 1.9 million Filipino taxpayers once the TRAIN takes effect into law under the new income brackets subject to withholding tax. This certainly should be welcome news, especially for the many fixed-income earners like us who are subject to withholding tax taken from our monthly pay slips.

While this means revenue loss for the government, the impact of the TRAIN law to the national coffers will be more than compensated by higher and new tax impositions.

While the bicam was closeted behind doors, farmers and the labor sectors renewed their appeals to consider their plight before further increasing the tobacco excise tax.

Various affected industry and labor groups expressed their respective objections to raise anew the tobacco excise tax, citing the significant reduction in production and huge job losses since 2013 following the almost yearly hike in tobacco tax meant to kill deadly smoking habits.

The TRAIN’s coal tax will also now provide for a gradual increase from the current P10/metric ton to P50 in 2018, P100 in 2019, and P150 in 2020. Coal used to be one of the 118 items exempted from the old VAT law. Environment and climate change advocate hailed the tax imposition on coal, which they call “dirty” fuel because of its toxic by-products emitted into our atmosphere. It is primarily used in many coal-fired power plants in the Philippines. Hence, affected sectors in the power industry warn TRAIN tax on coal will naturally be passed on to consumers in terms of higher electricity rates.

Also, the TRAIN law once effective would impose a P6 tax on diesel, cooking gas, kerosene, and bunker fuel for electricity generation over three years starting on Jan. 1, 2018.

The bicam trying to consolidate the differing versions of the Senate and House bill on TRAIN have reportedly wrapped up already their negotiations, er…I mean closed-door meetings.

There is nothing wrong with negotiations per se if there are horse-trading taking place at the bicam. However, the lack of transparency of the bicam as lawmakers negotiate behind closed doors makes it susceptible or vulnerable to such suspicions.

Horse-trading, as defined by Merriam Webster, is the kind of negotiations accompanied by shrewd bargaining and reciprocal concessions. In this case of the “third Congress,” it is a political horse trade. Sadly, we taxpayers get a Trojan horse full of tax collectors to raid some more our coffers.