The Senate Committee on Fiscal Affairs said Friday that it has yet to receive the House-approved budget resolution, which identifies $206.5 million in available resources for fiscal year 2006. This continued delay has prompted the panel chair to predict that it would be \u201cimpossible\u201d now to enact a budget before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not with me yet. I\u2019ve been looking for it since I heard that the House has approved it but up to now it has not reached my desk,\u201d said panel chair Sen. Joseph Mendiola.<\/p>\n
The lower chamber approved House Concurrent Resolution 14-3 during its session on Sept. 9. The Senate held a session on Wednesday, Sept. 21.<\/p>\n
According to Mendiola, the Senate\u2019s agenda did not reflect the H.C.R. 14-3. \u201cI know it\u2019s not there. Otherwise, I would immediately move that we prioritize it,\u201d said the senator.<\/p>\n
The Senate clerk office usually immediately includes all communications from the House and other offices on the agenda. As of Friday, the House clerk said that H.C.R. 14-3 has already been forwarded to the Senate.<\/p>\n
The transmission of a certain measure or communication can be delayed or postponed at the request of lawmakers.<\/p>\n
House Ways and Means Committee chair Norman S. Palacios said Friday that he had thought that the resolution has been with the Senate ever since it was passed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just waiting for the Senate now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mendiola, for his part, said he could not say if there is a deliberate effort by the House to delay the passage of the budget resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, I have not received it. I\u2019m very disappointed with this whole thing. We\u2019ve always been ready to act on it since day one. It\u2019s almost the end of the fiscal year and we have not even fully discussed it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The senator, who had always expressed optimism that a budget bill could be passed during an election year, said Friday that doing it now is impossible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible now. It\u2019s impossible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that, while a joint session could be convened to pass the budget, he said that the respective panels\u2014House Ways and Means and Senate Fiscal Affairs\u2014are not even ready to recommend a sound measure.<\/p>\n
\u201cA joint session is good, but what will you do there? You can\u2019t just jump into a joint session. The proper way is to refer it to respective committees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The House earlier adopted H.C.R. 14-3, which identifies $206.5 million as the government\u2019s only available resources for fiscal year 2006.<\/p>\n
The measure is $7 million less than the continuing resolution. H.C.R. 14-3 only identifies the available resources; it does not show how it would be divided among government offices.<\/p>\n
H.C.R. 14-3 rejects the Babauta administration\u2019s proposed revenue enhancement measures that is projected to raise nearly $20 million and which form part of its $225.8 million budget submission last April.<\/p>\n
The administration earlier asked the Legislature to raise the poker fee by $6,000, suspend Tobacco Control and Tobacco Settlement Funds, and divert local poker funds to the General Fund to ensure additional funds for education and other basic services.<\/p>\n
The administration said that, without these actions, the government would only be collecting $206 million in fiscal year 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate Committee on Fiscal Affairs said Friday that it has yet to receive the House-approved budget resolution, which identifies $206.5 million in available resources for fiscal year 2006. This continued delay has prompted a ranking senator to predict that it would be \u201cimpossible\u201d now to enact a budget before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94041","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}