Wall Street Got a Bailout, Why Not Puerto Rico?

Hector J. Figueroa - President of 32BJ Service Employees International Union wrote:Puerto Rico has been hit not just by two hurricanes but by three, not just Irma and Maria but way before, the real hurricane that hit Puerto Rico was an economic financial crisis that began many decades ago but became absolutely acute with the unfolding of the financial recession that we all experienced in 2008-2009, from which Puerto Rico has not recovered.

Trump was silent on Puerto Rico for days, spending his time attacking NFL players protesting police brutality and racism. Finally, he weighed in on Twitter yesterday and this is what he said: He talked about much of the island was destroyed, and then he says, "With billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks," which he said, "sadly must be dealt with." His priority right now is that Puerto Rico, in the midst of this disaster, still apparently make its debt payments to the Wall Street banks that have preyed on it over these years because of this crisis.

I think the president is wrong in thinking that Wall Street is going to be able to get back its money. That's not going to happen. The way we need to deal with this is the way we dealt with AIG, the way we dealt with Lehman Brothers, the way we dealt with the big banks. Those banks were not forced to pay their debtors. We basically bailed them out. Puerto Rico needs the same thing. We need a Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico the same way we had a Marshall Plan for the European countries after World War Two. We didn't ask them to pay the money they owed to Washington or London.

It is very difficult to import basic goods into Puerto Rico right now. There is something called the Jones Act that fundamentally requires the shipping of goods to Puerto Rico to be done in ships that have the U.S. flag. If you're trying to sail to Puerto Rico bananas made in the Dominican Republic, oil from Venezuela, cars from Germany, you have to first go to a port in the U.S., get the merchandise and then move it from that boat to a boat that then go to Puerto Rico because it's in the U.S.'s own fleet, or you have to make that change at sea, which is even more expensive. You have an economy that is artificially inflating the cost to Puerto Rican consumers of goods. We have asked of the president to waive that Jones Act requirement. It was done, is our understanding. The Washington Post reported on it that it was waived for fuel imports in Texas and Florida. Why cannot we waive it for all the things that Puerto Ricans need right now?

The situation continues to be one of tremendous risk to the lives of the 3.5 million American citizens who live in Puerto Rico. There is at least 40% of the population have no running water. Over 80% of the population has no electricity.