House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Ramon S. Basa, who has repeatedly expressed his opposition to any tax hike proposal, said their group aims for economic recovery.
Basa, Covenant-Saipan, said the House leadership is one step ahead of the Senate, having planned the creation of an economic recovery team during the budget deliberations last September.
He noted that the Senate did not communicate with the House when the senators formed their tax policy and enforcement panel.
“We were not consulted prior to the creation of that committee. We should have talked about it first and perhaps discussed it before they formed it. They didn’t know that we also have plans,” Basa said.
House Minority Leader Diego T. Benavente, R-Saipan, said the House leadership’s effort to create an economic recovery team was one of the suggestions by the Saipan Chamber of Commerce during the deliberations on the fiscal year 2011 budget.
Now that it is finally happening, he said he appreciates listening to the experts the House leadership invited.
He wishes that the House and the Senate could hold a joint meeting.
Unfortunately, he added, the two chambers are doing the same thing separately, which he feels will “slow down the process” of addressing the government’s revenue situation.
“I’m not part of the leadership and if this is what the leadership wants to do, what can I do?” Benavente said.
He said he and other minority bloc members had to sit in and help find some solutions to the CNMI’s economic problems.
Yesterday’s meeting was a good thing, he said.
No silver bullet
There is no silver bullet that can save the CNMI economy, according to Joe M. Arnett, the tax expert who will provide his expertise to the House “recovery think tank.”
Arnett, who served as an assistant professor for the University of Guam’s graduate accounting program and has authored several tax and investment profiles for Micronesia, said that increasing taxes is not the solution because it takes money out of the consumers’ hands.
A tax hike is a very short term and not totally productive solution, he said.
In an interview after the meeting, Arnett said the CNMI’s economic problem requires a long-term solution.
“We have to work together on ideas that will realistically improve the Gross Domestic Product of the CNMI,” he said.
There should be ideas that will create new investments in the CNMI, he added.
“We have a small and shrinking pie and if the government takes a large piece of that, the people will have much less,” he said.
It is better to increase the overall productivity of the islands, he added.
Arnett is former president of Guam’s Society of CPAs and is a member of the council for the American Institute of CPAs. His clients include Boeing, Hyatt International, Duty-Free Shoppers, Asahi Bank, Hongkong-Shanghai Bank, Merill Lynch, Asiana Airlines, Japan Airlines and Shell Guam Inc.
Also attending the meeting in the House chamber yesterday was John Sheater, Bank of Hawaii senior vice president, and Saipan Chamber of Commerce executive director Kyle L. Calabrese.
They said the House leadership asked for their assistance and they were glad to help.
The other lawmakers who attended the meeting were Vice Speaker Felicidad T. Ogumoro, Covenant-Saipan; Reps. Trenton B. Conner, R-Tinian; Joseph P. Deleon Guerrero, R-Saipan; Joseph M. Palacios, R-Saipan; Fredrick P. Deleon Guerrero, Ind.-Saipan; Sylvestre I. Iguel; Covenant-Saipan; and Edmund S. Villagomez, Covenant-Saipan.
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