MANILA, Philippines — If the Senate can hold four sessions a week to ensure passage of priority bills before Congress goes into break on June 4, so can the House of Representatives, a senior administration lawmaker said yesterday.
“I agree that we should also meet or have sessions on Thursdays (like the Senate),” Deputy Speaker Rufus Rodriguez said at the weekly virtual Ugnayan sa Batasan forum.
“Anyway, most of us are attending sessions via Zoom. All we have to do is open our laptops, so that we can have 12 session days instead of the nine session days (set until June 4). Three days a week is just too short,” he added.
The Cagayan de Oro City congressman said the House has already reached a consensus to pass the proposed P405.6-billion Bayanihan 3 stimulus package to help 108 million Filipinos cope with the pandemic.
“There is a consensus, and we have to pass these additional funds. I am very confident that under the leadership of Speaker Lord Allan Velasco this measure will be approved,” Rodriguez said.
He said the first component of the bill is the P216 billion for distribution to every Filipino at P2,000 each as a recovery measure from the economic cost of the pandemic to their livelihood.
He also disclosed that the proposal of the camp of former speaker Alan Peter Cayetano to give each family a cash aid of P10,000 cash has been rejected by the House leadership.
“It’s the consensus of the House leadership that it is just too big. The P2,000 per person is enough. So, there will be no more P10,000 cash aid,” Rodriguez said.
Fund sources
For his part, Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, who chairs the House ways and means committee, said the national government can learn from US President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan in sourcing funds for Bayanihan 3.
“This is the strategy of the $2.2-trillion infrastructure plan of the Biden administration. They plan to pay for it with new revenues and closing tax loopholes, over time. We can certainly learn from that approach,” he said.
“How we pay for Bayanihan 3 can be annuitized to some number of years, through gaming taxes on POGOs and e-sabong, for example,” Salceda said, referring to Philippine offshore gaming operators and digital cockfights. – Edu Punay