Two senators not better than one

Two senators not better than one | Daily Tribune

In real terms, we’d be better, not worse, off if there were only one senator rather than two with the same family name and from the same household sitting in the upper chamber. Given the growing pattern, this supposition would be easier to understand if we do the numbers.Notwithstanding their monthly Salary Grade 33, a senator receives P200 million in what used to be called the “priority development assistance fund” for various sponsored projects, totaling P1.2 billion in a full term of six years. Hence, if we have two Cayetanos, two Villars, two Estradas or Ejercitos, and so on, in one chamber, there’s sufficient reason to believe the office is being milked by as many of a family as there could possibly be.

Presumably, more of this breed are a “work in progress” and it’s a matter of time before we see a surfeit of Tulfos, Pacquiaos, Sottos, Marcoses and Romualdezes coming out of the woodwork. This alarming development cascades from the Senate to the House of Representatives.

It’s obliquely the highest version of the “Tragedy of the Commons” wherein while there’s a common grazing ground that appears to be theoretically open and free for all to graze in, only “sacred cows” are able to feed upon such a resource by almost exclusionary and rivalrous rights. A prevailing “cult of personality,” call it that, becomes the “curse of our collective life” in terms of government’s dwindling financial resources.

The studies authored by Clarissa David and Erica Rille Legara, with their strong theoretical assertion that candidates most likely to win a senatorial contest consist of only three types, namely, incumbents, celebrities, and dynasts — while having empirical basis — must be debunked. There ought to be an alternative rational “third way” by which newcomers could compensate for the level of “name recall” that they grossly lack.

This pattern could be very disastrous and could trigger “fiscal panic.” It’s as if in a “fiscally constrained environment,” our government coffers are literally being “robbed of” its monies in the treasury. Come to think of it, there are only a few families for whom chunks of budgetary assets are likely (mis)appropriated as earlier plunder cases would indicate.

Call to mind an existing Adopted Resolution No. 10 that virtually waives the usual auditing and accounting rules in favor of the members of the Legislature, both in the Senate and the House. All that it requires is the signature of the senator or congressman or the “magic,” not majesty, of s self-serving certification in the liquidation of expenses.

Even if taken in smaller aggregates or a clustered bunch of Resolution 10-certified public spending, the questioned expenses of Vice President Sara Duterte of confidential funds would dwarf in comparison to the sum total of legislators’ authorized allocations. When the allocation of the President is in the billions and that of VP Sara less than a billion, when the confidential funds of some vital line departments are in the billions, why create a mountain out of a molehill?

Put another way, why should something less matter more and something more matter less? In the manner both the Senate and the House jumped the gun on VP Sara with sweeping allegations of the misuse of public funds, the same question could be raised as to how much in public funds the legislators could have misused on the strength of their self-serving certifications blessed by Senate Concurrent Resolution 10?

Pushing the argument further, what accruing benefits, if any, could the country and the citizens derive from including in the government payroll those coming “bloody” twosomes who will receive paychecks? The future’s on the line!