News From the Funny Farm

As if the House of Representatives wasn't chaotic enough the Supreme Court recently ruled that more seats must be allocated to party list groups, increasing the number of seats for such groups by 29. There is now a total of 51 party list seats, up from 22. That does not include the 219 congressional district representatives. So let's see, this brings the final tally of congressmen to... TOO MANY. A report by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines states that each congressman essentially costs PhP 200 million in pork barrel, and that Congress recently increased its pork allocation by PhP 2 billion for a total of PhP 9.665 billion. I don't vouch for the accuracy of this statement, but if it were true then the recent en masse addition of congressmen might just break the bank. The lower house (so called for the depths to which many of its members stoop) may have to be referred to as the poor house.

But congressmen have more important things to worry about than the cost of additional congressmen and who is paying for all this (us taxpayers, of course). Their primary worry is the shortage of office space. One report says that existing congressmen refuse to share their offices with the newcomers. That comes as no surprise. Said one congressman, "We are not doctors so why should we share offices?". Tama nga naman - they are not doctors. They create problems, not cure them.

I will raise a howl of protest if the House announces that it needs a bigger session hall in which to conduct its business. Congress doesn't need a bigger session hall, it only needs to run its business more efficiently. And more intelligently. If we consider that congressmen are notoriously absent when it comes to attending sessions then a rotation system of attendance can be easily adopted. For example, those congressmen with vehicle registrations ending with 8 can be absent on certain days. Or all days. Wait a minute, all congressmens' vehicles end with 8. So there's the solution. Congress might just work more intelligently if everyone were absent.