{"id":377038,"date":"2022-10-04T06:06:46","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T20:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=377038"},"modified":"2022-10-04T06:06:46","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T20:06:46","slug":"senate-makes-cnmi-stay-within-us-treasurys-confines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/senate-makes-cnmi-stay-within-us-treasurys-confines\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Senate makes CNMI stay within US Treasury\u2019s confines\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
House of Representatives minority leader Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan), sitting second from right, explained on Saturday why he and two other members voted to pass the House\u2019s version of the budget bill for the government\u2019s operations in Fiscal Year 2023. Also in the photo, seated from left, are first lady Diann T. Torres, Sen. Victor B. Hocog (R-Rota), Gov. Ralph DLG Torres, Sen. Vinnie F. Sablan (R-Saipan), Demapan, and Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig. (FERDIE DE LA TORRE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

House of Representatives minority leader Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan) said Saturday that he and two other members supported the House\u2019s first version of the budget bill for the government\u2019s operations in Fiscal\u00a0 Year 2023 because it was only the budget legislation before them on that day.<\/p>\n

Speaking during Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 signing of a budget bill into law Saturday, Demapan said he, and Reps. Roy Christopher A. Ada (R-Saipan) and Patrick H. San Nicolas (R-Tinian) were the only minority members present when the House passed its version of the budget bill last Aug. 27.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut life is about benchmarks. On that day, there was only one budget version before us,\u201d said Demapan, adding that in the spirit of moving forward with the budget bill because it was like they were crunching for time, they agreed to pass the House\u2019s budget version and transmit it to the Senate.<\/p>\n

He said they supported the House\u2019s budget bill version that had no comparison, but when the Senate unanimously passed their budget version last Sept. 23, something better came before them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there is nothing in the world that prohibits us from un-supporting something for something better,\u201d the minority leader said.<\/p>\n

Demapan said they have that judgment to make and that they made that judgment when the Senate\u2019s version came forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that was now the better, best portion\u00a0 to guide our budget\u00a0 for the next fiscal year,\u201d he said, adding that they were more than happy to support the Senate\u2019s version.<\/p>\n

Demapan, Ada, San Nicolas, and Reps. Joseph Lee Pan T. Guerrero (R-Saipan) and Joseph A. Flores (Ind-Saipan) voted against the rejection of the Senate\u2019s version last Tuesday, Sept. 27.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that that\u2019s the product and that was the time that the people already needed a budget in place to alleviate the fears [on a partial shutdown],\u201d the minority leader said.<\/p>\n

Demapan said the Senate and the House had a battle over whether to use 80% or 20% of the American Rescue Plan Act funding for personnel, but at the end of the day there was one thing that they cannot overlook\u2014to kind of jeopardize U.S Treasury restrictions and approvals just because they call themselves as the legislature.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot jeopardize the one thing that could take all the funding away from us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Demapan is thankful to the Senate for making sure that the CNMI stays within the confines of the U.S. Treasury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House of Representatives minority leader Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan) said Saturday that he and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":377040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-377038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}