United Senior Citizens Partylist Rep. Milagros Aquino-Magsaysay on Wednesday (Aug. 6) was unanimously elected chairperson of the House Committee on Senior Citizens, boosting hopes for the swift enactment of the Universal Social Pension bill that she authored.

Aquino-Magsaysay takes over the post handled during the 19th Congress by Senior Citizens Partylist Rep. Rodolfo Ordanes. Ordanes will be the committee’s senior vice chair.

Ordanes is also expected to get a news assignment considered to be equally significant as the senior citizens panel chairmanship. Sources said he is being offered a vice chairman post in the powerful Committee on Appropriations.

In a statement Aquino-Magsaysay vowed to steer the committee into swiftly passing the USP bill providing for the grant of PhP500 financial assistance to all elderly Filipinos who are not covered by the Social Pension Program for Indigent Senior Citizens law.

She was among the principal authors of the bill that was approved on May 26, 2025 in the Lower House.

However, the Senate sat on the bill until the adjournment of the 19th Congress.

Magsaysay,. Ordanes and several other House members re-filed the bill .

“We will double our work, and even triple it if need be just to ensure that our United Senior Citizs across the country get the respect, honor, dignity and protection that they deserve from our society,” stated Aquino-Magsaysay.

Other priority measures lined up under Magsaysay’s chairmanship are the the Philippine Dementia Care Policy; Anti-Elderly Abuse Act, Nursing Homes for the Elderly and the Sangguniang Nakatatanda proposals.

Meanwhile, Ordanes said that being unloaded of the chairmanship of the senior citizens panel will allow him to personally pursue other vital legislative measures he authored.

“As senior vice chairperson of the House committee on senior citizens, I can focus more on the important technical work of consolidating sets of similar bills, instead of preparing for and moderating committee hearings and meetings,” said Ordanes.

“The task of steering the committee I yield to my colleague in senior citizens advocacies, Congresswoman Milagros Aquino-Magsaysay, the new chairperson, with whom I have a cordial and harmonious working relationship,” the veteran solon said.