KINGSTON, Jamaica—Government Senator Sherene Golding Campbell says the Budget as presented by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government during the just-concluded Budget Debate focuses on debt reduction that “prioritises Jamaica”.

She brushed aside as a “hodge-podge” of ideas”, the contributions from Opposition Leader Mark Golding and Opposition Spokesman on Finance, Julian Robinson “in that other place (House of Representatives)”.

“That’s not what it’s about. As Prime Minister Andrew Holness has demonstrated, it’s about making decisions that are informed by the realities we face, by the needs and the aspirations of our people – decisions that are grounded in a vision for a brighter, more prosperous future and a vision that is directed, designed to lift every citizen regardless of their background or circumstance,” Golding stated.

She was speaking in the Senate on Friday during the debate on the 2025 Appropriation Bill that was approved by the House of Representatives on March 25 at the end of a two-week debate in the lower chamber of the Parliament.

According to Golding, the prime minister and his team have tabled a budget that shows leadership that chooses Jamaica.

“It is no mistake that this government has sought to reduce the debt burden strangling the necks of the Jamaican people to free-up the fiscal space for investment in our people – something that every Jamaican can relate to,” Golding remarked.

She used a portion of her debate to push back at Opposition Senator Damion Crawford, who used a series of graphs and charts that the Prime Minster had used in his own budget presentation on March 20, to discredit much of what Holness said.

Crawford, in his contribution to the debate in the Upper House on Friday, brushed aside much of what Holness presented as “lies and fake news”, while using the prime minister’s own words.

Responding, Golding said “When my friend Senator Crawford gives his numbers and his graphs and he talks to me about these big financial words that I don’t know, I always take it back down to one thing. I’m a wife and a household manager. In fact, that is my most important job and perhaps my most stressful one as well as most fulfilling”.

“Every head of household in Jamaica managing a family, children, home, school, work etc., every single one knows that you cannot increase the fortunes of your family while carrying debt that is more than you earn. We know it as drowning in debt,” she added.

Senator Golding accused the previous People’s National Party Administration of leaving the country in debt in 2007.

She said, “Whatever the fancy numbers that people want to quote, and whatever the rewriting of history that colleagues want to engage in, the fact is if you have to borrow to send yuh pickney to school, and every Jamaican knows this, if you have to beg a money to pay a doctor’s bill, if you have to devote your entire salary to paying back the people you borrow [from], then you have nothing to put towards savings, nothing to put towards a little extra class for your child when they’re struggling in school, nothing to put down on a little house to start your family’s creation of wealth, nothing to put on a little car, not even a Probox”.

The government senator argued that “Jamaicans know that the quicker the debt is paid down, “the faster you can get to build up the fortunes of your family, saving for your children’s higher education and making the investment in acquiring a house or car. And they know that this can massively improve their family’s lives”.

“If we spend what we earn to do our hair or to party, we reduce the amount that we need to support the development of our families. Every head of household in Jamaica knows that basic math”.