Money bill escalates ego fight among legislators
The unending sibling rivalry between the Senate and the National Assembly deepened after senators accused MPs of shelving their pieces of legislation on the pretext of being money bills.
Senators are now accusing their counterparts in the National Assembly of sitting on 34 bills they have sent to the House for concurrence since 2017.
They include the County Boundaries Bill, 2017, Determination of the Nature of Bills (Procedure) Bill, 2018, the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill, 2018 and the Disaster Management Bill, 2018 among others.
The Constitution requires the two Houses of Parliament to have concurrence on all bills except those imposing tax or levy (money bills) which are purely under the armpit of the National Assembly.
Refuted claims
National Assembly Minority leader John Mbadi while defending his colleagues has refuted the claims saying most of the proposed laws from the Senate are money bills which are outside the Senate’s purview.
“I doubt if the Senate has the capacity to generate 34 bills. If anything, we have had instances where we have been looking for the Bills from the Senate to transact,” Mbadi said in response to the senators’ accusations.
However, senators are not only lamenting that their legislating counterparts have failed to act on pieces of legislation they originate but they also accusing them of killing them, only for National Assembly to later duplicate word for word to look as though is theirs.
This is the case of the Equalisation Fund Bill originally done by the Senate and transmitted to the National Assembly for concurrence, only to be dismissed as a money bill only to emerge again as a bill from the sister House.
While raising the concerns on the floor of the House, Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja and his Marsabit counterpart Hargura Godana alleged that it has become a practice of the National Assembly to refer to all Bills coming from the Senate as money Bills.
Initially, according to the duo, they used to say the Senate only needs to process Bills that concern counties.
“The National Assembly has been shelving all the Bills from the Senate then allowing its members to sponsor similar Bills.
They are taking Bills done by Senators, deliberated and passed in this House word for word as their own Bills,” Senator Hargura lamented.
He added: “Our colleagues in the National Assembly need to get serious because both the Senate and the National Assembly have the same mandate under the Constitution, to make laws. That is why Bills come from one House to the other,”
Have same mandate
“I think colleagues in the National Assembly need to get serious because we all have the same mandate under the Constitution to make laws,” he said even as insisted that both Houses legislate.
“We have to do it together. That is why Bills originate from one House and go to the other,” he added.
“I have seen Bills which have come from that House which are now in Second Reading in this House like the Equalisation Fund Bill. You will be surprised if you see what is at the back of that Bill,” he noted even as he asked the National Assembly to get serious.
Senator Sakaja faulted the National Assembly for arbitrarily declaring their bills as money Bills despite the fact that we (parliament) are served by the same Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).
“It advises us that a Bill is not a money Bill then the same PBO says it is a money Bill. We must resolve that issue,” he said.
