Lights!
THE House session on Tuesday once again reminded “The People” (i.e., voters) that all lawmakers support giving retirees a bonus — that lawmakers, in fact, want to double the amount that was first announced by the governor in mid-December.
CNMI elected officials on Capital Hill — all of them — are for giving the retirees what was supposed to be a Christmas holiday bonus. The money is there, says the administration. Lawmakers agree. The retirees deserve a bonus, elected officials say again and again like a mantra.
And yet over two months and several holidays later, not a single retiree has received his or her bonus.
“Nothing bonus,” but plenty heartfelt speeches. (And more to come.) Unlike checks, however, you can’t cash rhetorical flourishes at a bank.
Some may wonder. Isn’t appropriating other people’s money that is already there for the taking, and spending it on voters — isn’t that the only thing that most elected officials can actually do?
And they still can’t get it done?
And they say they’ll “try” to “solve” the CNMI’s other (and bigger) problems?
Camera!
WHILE the political camps blame each other for the deadlock, some of the more even-tempered legislators may want to look into the possibility of re-focusing the discussion on giving retirees a bonus. Because that’s what it’s all about, right?
If lawmakers truly want the retirees to get a bonus as soon as possible then surely they would want to act on a measure acceptable to both houses of the Legislature and the governor who must sign it after all.
To expedite the release of the bonus, the governor says he needs 100% reprogramming authority over the executive branch budget. However, his political opponents say he’ll abuse that authority. Okay then. Re-word the bill to restrict the governor’s reprogramming authority to a specific amount — just enough to pay for the bonus. His political opponents have a super-majority in the House. Surely they can monitor and/or oversee the expenditure of the funds.
However, if the governor’s political opponents would insist that the retirees, however “deserving,” can only receive a bonus if both the Senate and the governor do exactly what the House says — then good luck retirees.
Action!
DURING the House session, the government’s annual deficit was mentioned as one of the reasons why the governor should not be given 100% reprogramming authority. Big numbers were cited, the usual denunciations were made, and apparently those were enough to “explain everything.”
Sure. There is, however, a more informative way to discuss the government’s deficit, and it involves providing more details and context. This, after all, is an old issue. Previous CNMI administrations had to deal with it. And previous discussions indicated that emergency/disaster response and medical referrals were— and still are — the two items that usually overshoot their funding allotments.
And no, a growing economy will not “prevent” deficit spending. The government’s annual budgets are “projections” — “educated guesses.” The budget announced in 2018, for example, was shredded by Super Typhoon Yutu which still didn’t exist when the appropriation measure was being drafted and discussed earlier that year. Ditto with Covid-19, now in its second year and still on a rampage.
We need, in any case, more sensible (and less hysterical) discussions about the government’s finances and expenditures. Politicians come and go. But the government’s financial malaise is recurrent and systemic.
