A modest request
THE governor is right. The U.S. government should continue funding the annual economic reports prepared by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The cost should be insignificant for the feds — not even a drop in the federal bucket. In FYs 2022 and 2023 alone, according to NewsNation, the federal government made a total of $483 billion in payment “errors”: these are also known as “improper payments,” and they include “overpayments or payments that should not have been made, such as to someone who died or someone no longer eligible for government programs.”
And that’s just one example of how careless and profligate the feds — like many other governments — can be with taxpayer money. Here’s another example. As reported by NewsNation, the Congressional Budget Office found Congress spent $516 billion this fiscal year on programs with expired federal authorizations.
But suddenly, the feds can no longer pay for reports that, as the governor said, are essential tools for “understanding the [territories’] past economic landscape and challenges while measuring our progress.”
These reports benefit U.S. citizens in U.S. territories. True, aside from FICA, most CNMI residents don’t pay federal income taxes. But in the States more than 40% of households did not pay federal income taxes in 2022. Were these households considered “less American” and, therefore, unworthy of federal programs and services?
We hope that in the new Congress, the CNMI’s new delegate will work with her territorial counterparts in ensuring continued funding for the annual BEA reports. They won’t be asking for the moon. Not even a moonbeam.
Right again
THE governor also said that the BEA reports “highlight…areas where the Commonwealth must continue to focus its efforts, such as further diversifying our economy.”
Sure. But the CNMI doesn’t need an annual economic report to realize that the local economy must be “diversified.” That has been discussed in so many other economic summits and reports since the TT era, when the islands were still under direct U.S. administration.
In the 1999 economic planning conference funded by the feds and held on Saipan, diversification was among the main topics. But as an economics professor from the States pointed out: “There’s no such thing as overnight diversification. Diversification is really hard and as a result, you cannot expect very much promise very quickly. To actually diversify will take 10 or 20 years.”
The question then and now is what should be done while the CNMI tries to revive tourism and find ways to diversify its economy? How can a financially strapped CNMI government pay its (mounting) bills in the meantime?
It is time for this administration and Legislature to revisit another federally funded report, the one prepared by the 2020 Fiscal Response Summit. That report listed several specific measures that would significantly reduce the costs of running a government with so many redundant departments, bureaus, divisions, offices, agencies, programs and services.
“To do nothing is not acceptable,” said the then-lt. governor, one of the summit participants. “This is something our Commonwealth should have addressed long ago,” he added. The then-lt. governor — now the governor — is absolutely right.
