Sticky-fingered politicians
WHY is raising fees and/or taxes always the go-to option for penniless politicians? Not the last resort, but almost always the top option. At a recent House budget hearing for the Saipan Mayor’s Office, a lawmaker suggested raising marriage license fees. Just like that. No discussion of prioritizing expenses or finding ways to cut costs — which are the primary considerations of many businesses and households trying to survive a seemingly endless economic storm. No. For many elected officials, the shameless “solution” is always, “Let’s take other people’s money.”
And why single out the marriage license fee for a hike? Marriage is the bedrock of families, the nurturing ground for children, and a critical institution for social stability and the transmission of culture and morality. Why make it more expensive? For what purpose? To fund duplicative government services or programs, many of which could be better performed by the private sector?
Five years ago, many of today’s CNMI officials participated in the federally funded Fiscal Response Summit. They came up with several cost-cutting proposals. After all those expressions of “concerns” regarding the government’s financial condition and the “need to live within our means,” why has no one proposed the necessary legislation?
Come to think of it, why are we still surprised when politicians say one thing and do another?
Alarming indications
AS any economist would tell us, the surest way to raise government revenue is to grow the economy, which requires an adequate workforce. However, according to the Marianas Economic Roadmap based on the 2020 Census, the CNMI has experienced “one of the greatest rates of population decline in the United States.” The islands’ population has almost certainly continued to decrease since then. Worse, the exodus continues.
This rate of decline “is a challenge and an alarm for the economy,” the economic roadmap stated. And we’re not just talking about foreign workers. Reductions “to non-foreign labor have been pronounced, seeing a 12% decline in individuals born in the CNMI between 2010 and 2020. This is a problem that will continue to worsen. In 2000, the ratio of individuals below 15 to those older than 50 was 2.82 : 1, in 2010 that ratio was 1:46 : 1. In 2020 that ratio declined to 0.87 : 1 and for the first time in decades the number of individuals below 15 was less than the number above 50.”
These conditions, the roadmap stated, “give rise to the threat of accelerating structural ageing and the potential for rapid depopulation in the CNMI…. From these indicators it is apparent that there is a persistent youth deficit in the population, a reduction in the reproductive potential of the population, a lower number of entrants to the workforce as compared to exits, and a growing ratio of elderly to children.”
The implications are profound. “Further population decline reduces the available manpower for infrastructure development, decreases the capabilities to generate private sector income, reduces the domestic consumer base for economic activity, and worsens regional disparities as high skilled workers can find greater opportunities…in Guam, Hawaii or the mainland. This negative reinforcement loop, if not corrected, will reduce the economic potential of the CNMI to levels seen at the end of the Trusteeship, reversing decades of economic development efforts by both the federal and local governments.”
This is a nonpartisan issue, more pressing than the funding needs of mostly redundant government agencies.
