Who’s to blame? Who else!
LAWMAKERS have seven days to pass the fiscal year 2023 budget bill. Ideally, the bill should have been on the governor’s desk already to give him enough time to review the measure; but, as usual, lawmakers can always make several excuses, valid or not, while blaming something or someone for their inability to perform their most important task on time.
All this, however, is irrelevant to the hundreds of “nonessential” government employees who would not get paid if the House and the Senate fail to pass a new budget on or before Oct. 1st. It’s up to lawmakers whether or not to compromise and pass the budget. It’s their choice. The proverbial ball is nowhere else but in their court.
In this general election year, many lawmakers are seeking re-election or running for higher office. They are making the usual promises and saying the usual “right” things that many voters want to hear (as if for the first time). These candidates now have a chance to show they’re really “for the people” — that they can “work together” and “rise above politics” “for a better Commonwealth,” etc., etc.
Seven days, one task. Come to an agreement. Pass the budget before the deadline. Have pity on “nonessential” government employees. They’re voters, too, and are related to other voters, and they will rightfully blame you, their lawmakers, for not doing your job less than two months before Election Day.
Chicken Little meets boy who cried wolf
DOES anyone still remember the panicky pronouncements and overwrought rhetoric regarding the supposed impending end of public health services supposedly because CHCC wasn’t getting the funding it was supposed to receive from the central government?
No? Good.
It took the Department of Finance over a month to respond, but now we have better information about CHCC’s funding request, and yet another reminder that H.L. Mencken was right: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Figures
WHAT’S not imaginary, however, is the CNMI government’s schedule of payments to the Settlement Fund. If the local economy doesn’t improve significantly soon, then most of what little local revenue there is must be handed over to the Fund: a total of $135 million from FYs 2023 to 2026. This amount doesn’t include the retirees’ 25% benefit which is an additional $14 million to $15 million a year.
According to the Fund’s consultant, Milliman Inc., the CNMI government must remit an additional $145 million from FYs 2027 to 2031, and again this doesn’t include the 25% benefit. Milliman’s valuation report, moreover, indicates that the CNMI government will have to make payments until FY 2060 and perhaps even beyond.
Again we’re talking about just one of the CNMI government’s many, so many, financial obligations: government payroll, medical referrals, healthcare, education, scholarships, public safety, justice system, disaster/emergency response, utility payments, etc., etc.
But not to worry. Many candidates for office have a plan — to get elected. Then what? Great question.
