House speaker welcomes Babauta’s opposition to U.S. minimum wage

House Speaker Benigno R. Fitial welcomed what he described as the “battlefield conversion” of Resident Representative to Washington Juan N. Babauta to the cause of fighting imposition of the U.S. minimum wage on the CNMI.

“I’ve always noticed that running for Governor makes candidates more aware of how the voters feel and on this minimum wage issue, I guess John is no exception,” Speaker Fitial said.
“The voters have at least figured out the terrible and destructive effect of such an action on our economy which they’re already suffering with at home. Unfortunately, this fight has been going on for years in Washington and he was never seen in the trenches before.”

Mr. Babauta recently wrote to U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert expressing the hope that the CNMI would not be included in a bill which could include an election year compromise agreement to raise the U.S. minimum wage.

An earlier Democratic proposal had taken this ‘back door’ approach to carrying out a key goal of the Clinton administration federal takeover strategy.

Mr. Fitial said the legislation Babauta wrote to Speaker Hastert about does not include the CNMI. He said that CNMI lobbying efforts and positive relationship with the House leadership should make Mr. Babauta’s fears unwarranted.

“If John had been paying more attention years ago, he would have picked up on the threat to our economy represented by unilateral imposition of the U.S. minimum wage.” Speaker Fitial said, pointing out that this conclusion was reached by the 1997 Hay Group study for the CNMI and a more recent effort at Northern Marianas College.

“Our Covenant negotiators figured this out years ago, before all those lawyers and consultants,” Mr. Fitial said. “With our small population and the limits this imposes on our economy, we cannot support ourselves without a more flexible approach than is offered by U.S. labor and immigration controls. Our Covenant founders made their case and won, regardless of how much the Office of Insular Affairs might want to re-write the history today.”

Speaker Fitial said that it is fortunate that CNMI business leaders have taken up this cause and persistently pushed it, “because until this week, our Resident Representative’s office was saying nothing about it. It’s late in the day to be trying to mount a lobbying effort that should have been going on for the last ten years.”

“We heard from Washington,” the Speaker added, “that our Washington Rep. was upset when he learned that the CNMI was removed from the minimum wage bill that Senator Ted Kennedy was trying to push through the U.S. Congress last year.”