Budget Cuts Spark Congressional Turmoil

The Legislative Assembly erupted into name-calling and recriminations Wednesday as the Finance Committee proposed 35 billion colones in cuts to the Chinchilla Administration's 2012 budget.

Representatives of government ministries, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) stormed into the Assembly chambers like angry bees to protest the cuts made by the Citizens' Action Party (PAC), Libertarian Movement and the Social Christian Unity opposition coalition.

In U.S. terms, it was much as if a group of enraged liberal Democrats had crashed a Tea Party convention. It constitutes the strongest show of muscle by the coalition of opposition parties that took over control of the congress from the President's National Liberation party last May.

Friday was the last day the Financial Affairs Committee of the unicameral legislature could discuss the budget before it goes to floor debate. The Assembly has until Nov. 30 to pass some kind of budget. If one is not passed it would cause a Constitutional crisis, something Tico lawmakers dread and have avoided in the past.

The Supreme Court sent its big guns to plead against the cuts -- Supreme Court Chief Justice Luis Paulino Mora, Chief Prosecutor Jorge Chavarria and the head of the head of national crime investigation, OIJ director Jorge Rojas. "We talked with Deputy (Luis) Fishman (Unity leader) and tried to demonstrate how any cut would affect us," said Mora.

Breaking news: Yesterday, the original budget slashes of 54 billion colones received a coup de grace when Social Christian Unity Deputy Gloria Bejarano withdrew her support for the measure, saying that after analysis, she could not support some of the cuts to public services.

This left Financial Affairs Committee chairman Luis Fishman with only five yes votes out of the 11-member committee. He then switched to the 35 billion reduction version of the budget. Bejarno is the wife of former President Rafael Angel Calderon, one of the party leaders. Fishman, a Calderon loyalist, was not about to argue.

Thursday morning, Presidency Minister Carlos Ricardo Benavides met with the committee but was able only to negotiate an agreement to meet with the heads of the Judicial Branch and the Elections Tribunal to hammered out cuts of unnecessary expenses. with alterations in the budget bill to be made in floor sessions of the full legislature.

It is said that politics make strange bedfellows. Thus, a surprised National Liberation Party deputy, Victor Hugo Viquez, found himself agreeing with the head of the leftist ANEP (public worker's union), Albino Vargas. Both argued with the coalition lawmakers that the cuts would contravene labor agreements.

"Don Albino," said Viquez in wonder, "I never liked you -- until today." But Viquez clashed with Libertarian colleague Manuel Hernandez and called Financial Affairs Committee chairman Luis Fishman (Unity) "arrogant" as the latter tried to move Wednesday's sometimes acrimonious discussion forward.

The Finance Committee chambers also resounded to recriminations by community leaders has they surrounded PAC deputy Yolanda Acuna while she vainly tried to explain why the committee had slashed 4 billion colones from the Community Development agency (Dinadeco).

Presidency Minister Carlos Ricardo Benavides, using a conference in the Casa Presidencial as a pulpit to present President Laura Chinchilla's take on the cuts, accused the opposition of "an attempt to close out some programs of the government, the Supreme Court and the Elections' Tribunal."

Benavides said that the Financial Affairs cuts would mean eliminating satellite surveillance of the disputed Calero Island on the San Juan River (see previous articles), obtaining equipment for road maintenance and defaulting on 13 billion colones in contracts with suppliers.

Alfredo Jones, executive director of the Court, called the cuts "madness," adding that reductions would cripple cleaning of courtrooms, acquisition of software, rental of court space and guards. Chief of Public Defenders Marta Iris Munoz agreed. "There's no way," she said, that Fishman understands the Judiciary's need for 100% of its budget.

The Social Christian retorted that her arguments were "falsehoods" and that the lawmakers were simply forcing budget cuts that institutions had never been able to make by themselves. Fishman said his intention is to redirect funds to such projects as the purchase of aircraft for the police and an agricultural census.

Discussion: For the Libertarians, whose philosophy favors minimalist government, the budget reductions seem logical. But they will be harder to sustain for left-of-center PAC, especially those that can mean freezing public workers' salaries.

For the Social Christians, traditionally slightly right of center, the cuts may be popular with the party base. Weakened by the corruption trials of two former Social Christian presidents, they yearn for the good old days of the last half of the 20th century when they were, along with Liberation, part of a solid two-party system.

The cuts made in the Supreme Court budget are especially hard to justify to voters. The number one preoccupation for the public is crime and if the cuts are maintained, it could come back to bite opposition parties in the 2014 national elections.

Political coalitions are always fragile and this one runs the gamut of a philosophical spectrum. If one party pulls out, the coalition does not have the votes to pass a budget against Liberation resistance. But, unlike the current U.S. Congress, the Legislative Assembly is full of Tico politicians who know what negotiation is.