House productivity underscores Senate lag

By Pexcel John Bacon

AFTER a session that yielded hundreds of approved bills and several controversial measures, the next big question for the 20^th Congress is whether the Senate can keep up with the legislative momentum set by the House of Representatives, a political analyst said.

The House’s performance in the recent session was remarkable due to the number of bills processed and the sensitive issues it brought up, University of Makati political science professor Ederson DT. Tapia told BusinessWorld.

“The House of Representatives deserves credit for maintaining a relatively high level of legislative productivity in the 20^th Congress,” Mr. Tapia said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

“Regardless of one’s political preferences, it has processed a substantial number of measures, tackled difficult and often controversial issues, and sustained an active legislative agenda.”

He said that while it is a separate matter whether all of these bills will become law, the House has clearly demonstrated its ability to fulfill its agenda-setting and policymaking roles.

At the same time, Mr. Tapia also noted that the Senate faces more challenges as hundreds of House-approved measures still await action from it.

“The large number of House-approved measures pending in the Senate tells us two things. First, the House has clearly emerged as the more active legislative chamber in terms of policy production,” he said.

In a June 4 statement, the chamber reported 222 House-approved measures await Senate approval while its has passed on final reading half of the 52 measures identified by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) as priority.

Among the measures approved were the Anti-Political Dynasty Act, National Land Use Act, Waste-to-Energy Act, the amendments to the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, reforms in the Energy Regulatory Commission and expanded educational assistance measures.

SENATE BOTTLENECK
According to Mr. Tapia, this shows that the House has sufficient organizational capacity and political cohesion to advance proposals from committee deliberations to plenary approval. But he also said that the situation exposes an important truth in the country’s bicameral system.

“Legislative success ultimately depends on both chambers. No matter how productive the House is, reforms can stall if the Senate is unable or unwilling to act on them. In that sense, the bottleneck today appears less on the House side and more on the Senate side,” Mr. Tapia said.

The issue should not be which of the two houses is better, he said but whether they both fulfill their duties under the Constitution.

“From an institutional perspective, the challenge is not whether the House or the Senate is ‘better,’ but whether both chambers are fulfilling their constitutional roles,” Mr. Tapia said.

He also mentioned several politically sensitive measures advanced by the House, including the Anti-Political Dynasty bill and the impeachment complaint against Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio.

“The willingness of the House to take up politically sensitive issues such as the Anti-Political Dynasty bill and the impeachment complaint against the Vice-President suggests an institution that is increasingly willing to exercise its constitutional powers rather than avoid difficult questions,” he said.

However, Mr. Tapia said that these steps cannot be viewed in isolation from prevailing political realities in the country.

“It would be naïve to view these developments outside the context of political alignments. Legislatures are political institutions,” he said, adding, “The strength of the majority coalition, the relationship between Congress and the Executive, and the configuration of national political forces inevitably shape which issues move forward and which remain dormant.”

At the end of the session, Mr. Tapia said that a growing gap is emerging in the legislative performance of the two houses of Congress.

“What we are witnessing is a growing asymmetry in legislative performance. The House has largely been focused on advancing an agenda, while the Senate has often appeared distracted by internal factionalism, electoral positioning, and political maneuvering,” he said.

Although part of the Senate’s nature is to be a deliberative chamber, Mr. Tapia said that thorough scrutiny of proposals should not lead to paralysis.

For Mr. Tapia, the challenge at the opening of the next session will be whether the House can maintain its legislative momentum and whether the Senate can follow suit to advance the reforms that remain pending in Congress.