OBA's Richards: Budget is 'a bridge to nowhere'

FRIDAY, FEB. 24: The Premier described her Budget today as a ‘bridge of stability.’ We see it as a bridge to nowhere.

The One Bermuda Alliance will deliver its formal Reply to the Budget in one week, but before then we want to express our concern that the Budget will do little to create jobs and nothing to stabilize our precarious financial situation.

The Budget needed to be focused on growing the economy in ways that generate jobs and economic security for the people of this Island.

Only through growth can we create new streams of income to support families, broaden opportunity, sustain local businesses and start moving the Island back from the edge of a debt problem that threatens to cripple the future.

The Budget, in short, needed to present a plan to get the Island on the road to recovery. It did not.

Instead, it adds tens-of-millions of dollars to our debt burden.

It raids worker pensions and debt-clearance funds to cover shortfalls.

For the fifth year in a row, it spends more than it earns, continuing us on a path that takes us closer to meltdown.

The Budget contains no real plans to address the serious underlying economic problems in our economy.

Indeed, it continues to push problems down the road and onto the shoulders of the youngest Bermudians.

This is a Budget that avoids the hard decisions. This is a Budget that puts the political needs of the Government before the needs of the country.