Another federal takeover legislation

Legislation has been introduced in the US Senate to amend the Fair Labor Standard Act of 1938 to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 between September of this year and the year 2000.

The proposed amendment includes implementing the federal minimum wage in the Northern Marianas. Its sponsors include such liberal democrats as Senators Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Daniel Akaka of Hawaii.

It’s inconceivable that sponsors would attempt a federally mandated wage in the islands without due consideration to the devastation such a measure would wreak on every industry here. But such policy consideration in absentia has been and continues to be the approach Washington takes without deference to the Covenant Agreement.
Such an attitude defies the very essence of self-government, completely oblivious to the devastation federal policies would render fragile island economies.

We believe that such measure must be devolutionized from the federal to the state level given that local governments are best suited to decide policy matters that would enhance their abilities at wealth creation. It is pure adolescency to dictate statutory wages when such function must be deferred to state and insular governments. It is at the local level where the economic pulse is best monitored, never at the federal level where bureaucrats and ill-informed policymakers are at best, ignorant of the realities state and insular governments face on a daily basis.

This is the basic fallacy in the consideration of federal policies where the sentiments of governance are excluded in matters that affect them. It’s the exclusionary attitude that Washington must come to terms with for such irrelevant approach goes to show that bureaucrats and even policymakers have yet to exit the 19th Century while the rest of the global community marches towards the next millennium. Such punitive attitude has and continues to scare away lasting investments (wealth creation) in the NMI. It runs contrary to pronouncements by President Clinton for wealth and jobs creation in the entire global community.

The NMI must never be used as a guinea pig in matters that have taken more than two decades to build and refine. Even our best efforts have been ruined by the Asian crisis. The least we need at this juncture is another federal policy that would not only permanently ruin the balance of the local economy, but the unstabling and destructive effects such policies would trumpet to investors from around the region and the indigenous people who must live with decisions they were never given a chance to partake.

We place our livelihood in the laps of Republican friends who believe that governance is best left at the state and insular levels. We too subscribe to the Republican philosophy of less government. But even with this reliance in place, who would monitor and guard the NMI’s interest on Capitol Hill? Si Yuus Maase`!