Maverick Sen. Panfilo Lacson has a pretty good suggestion for the current conduct of the opaque bicameral conference meetings which come about every time legislative measures from the House and the Senate are ironed out and agreed upon by the two congressional chambers, usually in virtual secrecy, without the public knowing how the changes, through amendments, were made.

For full transparency, Lacson, in an interview, has proposed to make public the bicam conference meetings on the proposed P3.757 trillion national budget for 2019.

Apparently, going by what was disclosed by Lacson during the interview, it is usual for all the congressmen and senators involved in the bicam meetings to have a photo op, after which a much smaller group forms for the bicam discussions. This means that the public is always kept in the dark on the matter of what amendments have been introduced and what have been dropped from the original bills in reconciling the disagreeing provisions between the two versions of the bill.

It is just the small bicam group that discusses the changes through amendments introduced by this small secretive bicam, more known as the Third Chamber of Congress, which, if compared to the power of the two congressional chambers, the small bicam is even more powerful than the House and the Senate combined.

What happens, Lacson said, is that there is no transparency at all.

It would be best if there was full transparency from the bicam meetings, he added, since that way the public will know what has been amended and which bicam member sought that amendment.

Lacson said he wanted the process to be aboveboard and was looking forward to how the chair of the House appropriations committee planned to make it transparent. But he said he wanted every proposed amendment and its proponent be made public.

“What I understand to be transparent is for individual congressmen to reveal through the bicameral conference committee their amendments and we senators would do the same” he said.

This is a time when requests are whispered to leaders to make the changes, he said.

What it certainly looks like is a case of horse-trading within a very small group that is so powerful it can make changes in the approved bills and some amendments to benefit them.

The way things go, prior to the bicam and photo ops, the House passes its bill with the approval of the second and third reading. The third reading approval is usually automatically approved.

The Senate does the same and expects approval by today.

So, what has already been approved by the majority of the members of the House and of the Senate still undergoes more changes through amendments.

After the final changes are made and form a single measure, the House and the Senate move to ratify the bicam approved legislative measure and submit this to the President for his signature that is needed for this bill to become law.

The president can, of course, veto portions of the legislative bill, but it is highly doubted that Congress has the inclination to override the presidential veto.

While Lacson bats for transparency, and even wants the media to fully cover the bicam meetings to make the proceedings transparent, all the way from the ratification and the presidential signing, which is more ceremonial than anything, the maverick senator who seems to know just what goes into these horse-trading deals among senators and congressmen in the small bicam, hardly ever if at all, names the members of the small bicam group.

Still, one would logically assume that the small bicam group would be led by the House and Senate leaders, the major sponsors of the budget bill, the finance and appropriations heads in the House and the Senate.

It is also usual that the practice of give and take in amendments go on, despite the fact that revisions have already been approved by both houses in the second and third readings.

However, what has probably been rejected by way of amendments is resurrected in the small exclusive bicam group prone to whispering hopes of their colleagues.

And the amount that is involved in the horse-trading that happens in this small exclusive and powerful bicam group is some P75 billion that was supposed to go to the DPWH, which Public Works Secretary Mark Villar claimed he knew nothing about the insertion, despite the fact that he was present during the Cabinet meeting when this insertion of P75 billion to his department was discussed and approved.

That P75 billion is a big bonus for the porkers, some of whom are outgoing members of the House and the Senate.

Transparency is never popular with members of Congress, or the powerful small bicam, which is why these politicians always insist on secrecy.

After all, billions are involved for them to have — some of them for their constituents and maybe more of them for themselves.