MANILA, Philippines — Lawmakers from the Senate and the House of Representatives are expected to start filing their bills today ahead of the opening of the 18th Congress on July 22.
The staff of senators and congressmen line up at the bills and index offices as early as dawn to ensure that their principals would have the distinction of having their measures among the first to be filed.
In the Senate, however, the Senate president and the rest of the chamber’s leadership would be the first to file their respective bills.
They would be followed by the come-backing legislators, followed by senators elected in 2013, then those assuming office in 2016, and neophyte senators would be the last to file their bills.
Sen. Sonny Angara said the filing of bills would provide President Duterte “with a deep pool of measures he can support and ask Congress to immediately pass when he delivers the State of the Nation Address later this month.”
Angara urged Malacañang to choose what Senate proposals to officially back “so we can start the legislative year with a common agenda.”
He said “policymaking has always been a two-way street, with bills emanating from both the executive branch and the legislature, and these branches improving on each other’s proposals.”
“Let’s begin with the easy ones, the so-called low-hanging fruits, while we subject complicated measures to more study, debate and improvement,” he added.
Angara said while he will have “a bill for every sector,” he will concentrate on measures that will boost social protection, improve access to and quality of education, better health care, guarantee food security, and create economic and job opportunities.
“Some of these are legacy measures, a continuation of what my father initiated in his four terms in the Senate. These are the ‘Alagang Angara’ laws,” he said in a statement.
Among the first bills Angara will file today is the upgrading of the salary grade of public school teachers from 11 to 19, “which jibes with what the President has promised to our teachers.”
“We have increased the pay of our soldiers and policemen. It is time to do the same to our public teaching corps who are fighting the war against illiteracy,” he said.
Another bill he said he would file grants discounts on books, health care, school supplies, and some school fees to poor students in all school levels, including those in technical-vocational institutions.
He will also push for the doubling of the social pension of destitute senior citizens from P6,000 to P12,000 a year, as well as two more bills, one for Filipino seafarers, and the other for barangay workers.
Opposition Sen. Francis Pangilinan is expected to file today 10 priority measures focusing on agriculture, environment and civil service.
These include the much-delayed Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Act or the Coco Levy Act; bills on post-harvest facilities, organic farming, and expanded crop insurance; National Land Use Act of 2019; establishment of the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and the Department of Disaster and Emergency Management; Rainwater Management Bill; Single-Use Plastic Regulation and Management Act; and the Basic Education Teachers Pay Increase Act.
“We will continue the fight we started even before the 17th Congress. We believe that prioritizing the agriculture sector and increasing the incomes of farmers and fisherfolk would help in alleviating poverty and bolstering the economy in rural areas. To support this endeavor, we must also pursue relevant legislation for the environment,” Pangilinan said in a statement.