There is no other legislative chamber in the democratic world that is as exuberant in resoundingly voting 'ayes' to priority bills from the President.
WHAT country on Planet Earth hosts the most obsequious, the most timid of legislatures, where lawmakers — possessors of co-equal powers with the executive and the judicial branches — treat the President the way the gofers of the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner treated the imperious, overbearing major baseball team owner? When the late Yankees owner snapped his fingers, his minions jumped and reverentially asked this routine question: Sir, is it one lump or two? The minions, familiar with the moods and wants of the late Yankees owner, knew he wanted coffee right there and then.
That country, of course, is our Philippines and that chamber is our House of Representatives. Consider the following.There is no other legislative chamber in the democratic world that is as exuberant in resoundingly voting 'ayes' to priority bills from the President. No other chamber in the democratic world automatically responds with unequivocal acquiescence to every presidential order, directive and command. No other chamber in the world has the lapdog temperament of our legislature on issues related to presidential initiatives.No other legislature in the world derives extreme pleasure from not exercising its override powers on presidential vetoes, as overrides are treated as political heresies of the worst kind. As slights on the sensitivities of the President, whose feelings should never be slighted.Top justices, Cabinet members, officials of constitutional bodies, military officers, ambassadors and consuls often sail through the confirmation process with ease, with the minimum of scrutiny and questions. Unless, the moral turpitude is in plain sight and the nominee's moral bankruptcy cannot be papered over.Nominees to the Supreme Court and other top courts are rarely asked on their judicial philosophies in deference to the nominating power, the President. Presidents are not kings, the then-federal court judge Kentanji Brown Jackson wrote, while commenting on Donald Trump's many excesses Here, the House of Representatives regards the President as a de facto king.Presidents of old and mature democracies who are occasionally tortured and often rejected by legislatures exercising the co-equal clauses in their Constitutions can only look with envy at the timidity of our House and often wish that such prostituted collaboration would be the executive-legislative arrangement in dealing with the presidents on major policy initiatives.That would prevent messy and protracted fights to pass critical spending bills, bills that enhance the social safety nets, universal health care, infrastructure bills with the least of riders and bills on defense and external aid.Recently, a major bill whose time has not come cleared the House plenary with indecent haste with just six muzzled voices against. The draft law creating the Maharlika Investment Fund sailed easily through the pliant chamber after its presidential certification as a priority bill. Deliberations set aside all arguments to the contrary, including the compelling arguments against it from the rare National Artist in economics. The six dissenting votes were hardly given time to explain their votes.There was hardly any public hearing on the fund creation. But that was totally expected.In 2019, after Malacanang backed the passage of a draft law that sought to end the quantitative restriction on rice and start a tariff-based regime, the Hoose of Representatives passed with lightning speed its version of the Rice Tariff Law. Members of Congress representing the major rice-producing districts in the country — including the four districts of Nueva Ecija — said 'aye' to the bill even if those votes would reduce the already struggling small rice farmers to dead men walking. The House members would rather stab the already puny backs of their constituents than say no to a Palace-certified bill.The Philippine House, a chamber of toadies, should find dear lessons from what is going on right now at its US version, recently taken over by the Republican Party. Critics, mostly democracy advocates, now call the US version a chamber of 'crazies,' which is not too off-the-mark given the determination of the Republican-controlled chamber to sabotage the Joe Biden presidency, even if this means literally burning down the chamber, an institution of several centuries. And perhaps, burning the institutions of democracy in the world's oldest democracy altogether.The chaos and dysfunction at the US House of Representatives was clear from the start, with the usual pro forma election of the House speaker needing a long-drawn five days and 15 roll-call votes. Kevin McCharty, the conference leader and a California congressman, won the gavel after submitting to extremists demands from a right-wing fringe of about 20 members. Now, the sabotage of the Joe Biden administration, which the right-wingers loath, is starting in earnest. One McCarthy supporter faked his entire resume: education, employment, financial status, religious orientation. One fervently believed that Jews operated space lasers. Most of the 20 also believed that the election was stolen from Donald Trump and Trump is the legitimate US President.There is already one vote from the Republican-controlled chamber that threatens the whole global economy. This is to tie up any increase in the US debt ceiling, usually one of the urgent but non-controversial acts of the US Congress, to a reduction in federal spending. Any reduction in federal spending would have to intrude into sacrosanct areas: Medicare cuts, SSS cuts that the Biden administration would protect at all cost.With the increase in the debt ceiling held hostage by the Republican conference, you can imagine this nightmarish scenario happening. A credit downgrade for the US that would spill over to the global financial markets and create a tsunami of financial gloom and doom. The Philippine financial ecosystem would also suffer from such US meltdown. The $24-trillion plus economy of the US is the biggest in the world, with an outsized influence on the overall global economy.Sabotaging, demonizing and crippling the ability of Joe Biden to govern. Simply put, this is the agenda of the Republican-controlled House FJB, with the 'F' part still unprintable.Another consensus from the Republican conference is to pursue relentless investigation of the government agencies that looked and probed the bloody Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. Which on Jan. 8, 2023 took place in Brasilia, staged by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the defeated presidential candidate and the so-called Trump of the Tropics.Political types are loath to answer this question. Which chamber do you prefer? The toadies here? Or the crazies over there? Just like being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
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