“We will accept. We are not going to counter the Senate proposal,” Cabrera, R-Saipan, told reporters yesterday.
But he said they will also have to reduce the allocation for the Legislative Bureau.
He noted that the Legislature includes the bureau “so everybody’s allocations will be reduced and so we can give more funding to other agencies” as proposed by the Senate.
Cabrera said the House leadership does not oppose providing more funds to the Public School System and Northern Marianas College so they can meet the federal maintenance of effort requirement
They just want to see where to get the additional money they can give to PSS and NMC, he added.
“We don’t want to hurt other departments,” he said.
Cabrera said as much as possible, the House also wants to help “revenue-generating departments do they can generate more.”
“Reducing the funds of a revenue generating department will create a problem,” he added.
The administration, he said, knows exactly how much money is spent by each department so the House will have to follow the budget submission of the governor who, he added, also consulted with the CNMI mayors.
He said the Legislature, cannot “arbitrarily” remove funds from one agency without hearing from the administration particularly from the Department Finance which, he added, knows exactly how much each agency needs to spend for the entire fiscal year.
“It is very improper for us to be moving an amount from one department to another,” Cabrera said.
Their decisions should not be about politics but about doing the right thing, he added.
“I am just doing the right thing for our people who are suffering. We don’t want the 16-hour cut but we don’t want another shutdown,” he said.
“We want to pass the budget based on the governor’s submission…. We are not supposed to be making so many changes,” he added.
Cabrera said that if the Senate will act on the budget next week, the House may need only two days to pass the bill.
All they have to do is look at the new numbers the Senate will propose and try to reconcile their differences, he added.
Without a new budget law by Oct. 1, the government’s nonessential agencies and activities will have to shut down.
