“Ingraham complaints dismissed by Deputy PM” – The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “IN DEFENCE of the government’s fiscal performance this term, Deputy Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis yesterday dismissed criticism leveled by former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham as complaints from an ‘alternative universe’.

Mr. Davis claimed that Mr. Ingraham was ‘missing the spot light’, suggesting that the former leader’s comments were motivated by the pain of watching his successor – Dr. Hubert Minnis –‘wander around in a fog of incoherence’.

Latching on onto Mr. Ingraham’s admission that the country was still grappling with the effects of the Great Recession when his party left office, Mr. Davis questioned how the former Free National Movement (FNM) leader could find ‘the nerve to complain about how it was rescued?’

‘The reality is quite simple,’ Mr. Davis said, ‘the FNM left the economy on an unsustainable path.  In 2012, the government was spending $500m more than it was collecting.

Without the implementation of VAT, billions would have been added to the national debt – an unmanageable amount, which would have left our country unstable and vulnerable to requiring IMF bailouts and restructuring like Jamaica.”

The Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) continues to speak to having to clean up the ‘mess’ left by the Free National Movement (FNM) administration and now Deputy Prime Minister Davis is talking about having rescued the country and I look around to see exactly what ‘mess’ was left without a plan in place and exactly how has the Christie led administration has rescued the country and from what exactly?

What did former Prime Minister Ingraham say that has Mr. Davis talking spewing just irrational nonsense?

“Ingraham hits out at lack of transparency’ on economy” – The Tribune 03.21.2017

Excerpt from this article; “Mr. Ingraham said: ‘The reality though is that there is a feeling in this society that the Value-Added Tax was a tax that was going to be used to pay down the government debt.  Well, that was how it was sold to the public but the truth is that it was a revenue raising measure.

‘The national debt in and of itself was not a challenge in a society if people could see where the money is going and what the money is being used for.  When you continue to increase the debt and you’re able to touch, feel and see what the money is being spent on.

‘The government does have answers to give as to why the debt has increased to such an extent over the last four and a half to five years.  They blame us for many things but the reality is, if you take the amount of money they borrowed over the last four and half years and compare it to what the FNM borrowed in the five years it was in office – even while the Great Recession took place in 2007 and government revenue just dropped out – expenditure just skyrocketed.”

The question is why has government expenditure outpaced that of the previous administration; especially with the introduction of VAT?

When it came to the issue of the increasing national debt Deputy Prime Minister Davis responds; “…..that the government plan reduced the deficit by 80 per cent by the 2016/2017 fiscal year and attributed the current setback ‘mainly to expenses associated with two devastating hurricanes, Joaquin and Matthew.’  The expenses associated with these two storms have been noted but when was our first credit rating downgrade?  This is where things get a bit ‘tricky’.

If we were to ‘forgive’ the government for their fiscal irresponsibility before the 2016/2017 period, and only focus on that period, which would be ridiculous, but exactly what is DPM Davis suggesting that we should do; then we must note that during that period when he claims that the ‘that the government plan reduced the deficit by 80 per cent’, then it is safe to assume that the current deficit and additional debt has been incurred since this time and would it be safe to assume that the two named storms are the sole reasons as to why the national debt has increased by over a billion dollars and why the country’s sovereign credit rating has been downgraded at least twice during this period; once on August 22^nd 2016 by Moody’s and then again in December 2016 by Standards and Poor’s?

It s indeed laughable that Deputy Prime Minister Davis would suggest that another person’s criticism of his government’s fiscal practice as being from an ‘alternate universe’; while the entire Progressive Liberal Party’s governance to date has been an exercise in nothing more than alternative facts and theories.

The Progressive Liberal Party fails for one reason, it is their nature.

END