A timeless piece of advice
WHEN private businesses incur losses, they cut costs. When the government incurs losses, it tries to impose additional costs on private businesses. This is yet another reason why government can’t be run like a business — and why government officials, for once, should stop dispensing business advice to the private sector. That’s like inviting someone who’s never held a job to be the keynote speaker on Career Day.
Before sharing their putative business acumen with actual businesspeople, government officials should, for once, try operating their offices without overspending, misspending, or running out of public funds (other people’s money) before the end of the fiscal year — all while still missing many or most of their annual performance targets.
As economist Gordon Tullock once noted, a politician in a democratic society is someone who makes a living by winning elections — a talent, to be sure, much like playing air guitar. But as another economist, Don Boudreaux, would put it, “a politician in a democratic society is not someone who has specialized knowledge and skills at doing any of the tasks that he or she typically promises voters that he or she will carry out — tasks such as divining how resources can be better allocated or how to bring about here on earth something closer to nirvana.” With relatively few exceptions, Boudreaux added, “the politician…is an officious busybody. He or she is someone who mistakes his or her good intentions and unconstrained imaginings — and lust for power — as a moral charge fused to a miraculous ability to boss other people around for their own good. In short, the politician is someone not to be trusted with the power that he or she seeks.”
The magical thinking of elected officials
IN 2017, the CNMI Office of the Public Auditor issued a report on CUC that should be required reading for anyone in government or politics. The report’s takeaway was pretty clear-cut. CUC “has not achieved its purpose to operate as an independent public agency with the legal and political independence to perform as a non-subsidized, autonomous corporation due to interferences by the legislature, various governors and the boards of directors [gubernatorial appointees] throughout the history of CUC.”
And what has been the response of the CNMI’s elected officials? Continued interference in CUC’s operations. The latest example is legislation that, like a magic wand, waives CHCC’s outstanding penalties and late fees owed to CUC — a total of $30 million.
The bill’s proponents could have stopped there and said nothing more. CHCC, after all, is the islands’ lone hospital and depends on subsidies from a government that can barely afford them.
But no. They have to explain why the bill is a “really good idea.” Their claim? That the $30 million CHCC will no longer pay CUC could instead be used for medical referrals — something the administration and Legislature are currently unable to fully fund.
One problem. The $30 million exists only on paper. CHCC cannot afford to pay it. CUC will never see a cent of it. But medical referrals still need to be funded by actual money. Whose money then?
Anthony Gill, a professor of political economy at the University of Washington, once offered the following advice to the voting public: When “politicians enact new laws to alleviate economic hardships, we should first ask if they were the source of those problems. Often, they are.”
