[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 172 (Wednesday, October 25, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6792-S6793]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Puerto Rico

  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I rise today to talk about the dire 
humanitarian situation in Puerto Rico and to challenge this country to 
end a century of discrimination against the Puerto Rican people.
  While the fleeting media attention may have waned, the desperation of 
the people of Puerto Rico has not. The lackluster response from the 
Trump administration is an outrage. It has been more than a month since 
the hurricane, and 80 percent of the island's electricity is still out. 
Roads and bridges have collapsed. Homes have been destroyed. Of the 67 
hospitals that are open, less than half of them are operating with 
electricity. Families are searching far and wide for clean drinking 
water, and some have been drinking water from wells at a Superfund 
site.

  This kind of inhumane response would never ever be permitted in a 
U.S. State. But one doesn't even have to look at other States to 
evaluate this response; we can look abroad. Within 2 weeks of the 
earthquake in Haiti, there were 17,000 U.S. military personnel on the 
ground in that country. Two weeks after Hurricane Maria made landfall 
in the United States, the United States had deployed only 10,000 troops 
to respond to the disaster in both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin 
Islands.
  News broke yesterday that the state-owned electric company on the 
island, PREPA, refused to operationalize mutual aid agreements with 
electric companies on the U.S. mainland. That is a standard step in 
normal disaster response. Fault lies with PREPA, but how on Earth did 
FEMA and the Trump administration allow that to happen, leaving 
millions of Puerto Ricans in the dark and in danger for almost a month? 
It is beyond comprehension, and it speaks to the failure of the U.S. 
Government's response.
  The truth is that Hurricane Maria exposed far more than just 
immediate physical damage; the hurricane also laid bare a very simple 
truth that is plain to every resident of the island and every Puerto 
Rican living in my State. The truth is this: The United States has been 
screwing Puerto Rico for over 100 years, and this is just the latest, 
most disgusting chapter.
  There is an undercurrent in the discourse about Puerto Rico that is 
as pernicious as it is ahistorical. You will hear people, like 
President Trump, say that Puerto Ricans are wholly responsible for the 
financial mess they find themselves in and that Puerto Rico should just 
pull itself up by its bootstraps. The rewriting of history ignores the 
fact that the Federal Government and Congress have had our hands 
tightly wrapped around those very bootstraps since 1898.
  The United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain through the Treaty 
of Paris in 1898, when the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish 
American War. Puerto Ricans didn't ask to be part of the United States; 
we acquired the island. A century ago, Congress extended U.S. 
citizenship to Puerto Ricans. In 1950, Congress recognized the island's 
limited authority over internal governance, and Puerto Rico became 
formally known as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
  Being a commonwealth or a territory is permanent second-class status. 
Without access to the same healthcare reimbursement, the same 
infrastructure funding, the same education dollars as other States, 
Puerto Rico starts every single race 50 feet behind the rest of 
America. These built-in disadvantages are designed to hold Puerto Rico 
back. They have been in place for 100 years to keep Puerto Rico from 
being a true economic competitor with the mainland.
  Believe me, the Puerto Rican people have done everything they can to 
overcome this discriminatory treatment. There is an entrepreneurial, 
never-say-die spirit in Puerto Rico. I know this because no State has a 
greater percentage of residents with Puerto Rican roots than 
Connecticut. But despite the strength of the Puerto Rican people, they 
are stuck because Washington has tied their hands behind their backs by 
taking away the right to vote in Federal elections, virtually 
guaranteeing that Puerto Rico's economic disadvantage will never ever 
be remedied. It is a black hole from which Puerto Rico and the other 
four U.S. territories can never escape.
  Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens--despite the fact that recent polling 
suggests that half of Americans don't know this--but they can't vote 
for President. They have no voting representation in Congress. Think 
about it this way: Americans with a mainland address can vote if they 
move to Mongolia or Sierra Leone, but if they temporarily take up 
residence in a U.S. territory like Puerto Rico, they miraculously lose 
their right to vote.
  There are real, practical consequences to this lack of 
representation. We are watching the most egregious example right now. 
Do you really think that if Puerto Rico had two U.S. Senators, 80 
percent of the island would still be without power a month after the 
hurricane? By the way, Puerto Rico has more citizens than 21 States 
that have a total of 42 Senators in this body. Do you think a President 
would denigrate and insult Puerto Rico the way President Trump has if 
it had electoral votes?
  The botched response to Maria is just the latest attack on the 
island, perpetuated by a Congress that can afford to ignore a big part 
of the United States that has no voice in Congress to object.
  For over six decades, the U.S. Navy pummeled the island of Vieques, 
just off Puerto Rico's coast, with ordnance, using it as a bombing 
range for military exercises. Those weapons allegedly contained 
uranium, napalm, and Agent Orange. Today, people who live on Vieques 
are eight times more likely to have cardiovascular disease and seven 
times more likely to die of diabetes than others in Puerto Rico. Cancer 
rates on Vieques are much higher.
  If you want to know why Puerto Rico has been in a decade-long 
recession, look no further than Congress. More than 50 years ago, the 
U.S. Government launched several initiatives to help spur economic 
growth on the island. It was a good thing. Ironically enough, the 
initiatives were collectively called Operation Bootstrap. One of the 
tools that were used to spur economic growth was a tax break to allow 
U.S. manufacturing companies to avoid corporate income taxes on profits 
that were made in Puerto Rico. Manufacturers descended on the island in 
droves, and the entire economy in Puerto Rico became oriented around 
those companies. But what Congress gives, Congress can take away, 
especially if the entity you are taking from has no meaningful 
representation in Congress. In 1996, Congress phased out the tax 
breaks. Guess what. It sucked the island's tax base away, cratering 
Puerto Rico's economy for the next two decades.

  It is worth noting that Puerto Rico is not blameless for the 
financial situation that it is in. There definitely has been a fair 
share of mismanagement on the island. Bad decisions have been made. 
Saying that Puerto Rico is only a victim of schemes of the mainland is 
not true. But the same can be said of fiscal mismanagement and bad 
decisions in other U.S. States. But a century of underinvestment in 
Puerto Rico has been a big part of the story as to how they arrived at 
this situation. And unlike all those other U.S. States, Puerto Rico has 
no way of rectifying the past misdeeds because its toolbox to reckon 
with its past is limited to what Congress sticks in the toolbox, and 
that toolbox doesn't provide access to the Bankruptcy Code.
  As a result, Congress passed PROMESA, which created this financial 
oversight board on the island. Puerto Rican bondholders on Wall Street, 
who bought the bonds for pennies on the dollar, are now challenging the 
current oversight board's legitimacy, with the hope of being paid 
before the island gets relief. These practices of the bondholders, who 
have been circling the island for years, are made more menacing because 
they are spending boatloads of money lobbying Congress. Just watch TV 
at night in Washington, DC, to see their ads. They know that the people 
of Puerto Rico have no voice here, have no votes here.

[[Page S6793]]

  Now it looks as though other predators are circling. News came out 
this week that a small, two-person company in Whitefish, MT, somehow, 
some way, got a no-bid $300 million contract to restore power in Puerto 
Rico from the island's power authority--the same power authority that 
refused the help of experienced electric companies that actually know 
how to turn the power back on. How does something like this happen? It 
turns out that the little town in Montana is the home of the new 
Secretary of the Interior.
  Get ready, because this is just the start. President Trump and his 
billionaire cronies are going to use this disaster to enrich 
themselves. The Whitefish power contract given to a friend of the 
Secretary of Interior--with two people employed at that company--is 
just a scratch on the surface of what is to come.
  Puerto Rico has been getting screwed for decades. None of this is 
new. None of this is unpredictable. If you think this is just one 
century-long string of rough luck, you are ignoring the last critical 
aspect of Puerto Rican history.
  Back in 1901, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that even though 
residents of the territories lived in the United States, they shouldn't 
be able to enjoy full constitutional protections, the Supreme Court was 
pretty explicit about why these citizens in places like Puerto Rico 
deserved this second-class treatment. Justice Henry Brown, who authored 
the separate but equal doctrine, held that Puerto Rico and the other 
territories didn't need to be afforded full rights under the 
Constitution because the islands were ``inhabited by alien races, 
differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and 
modes of thought.'' That, my friends, is racism defined. And it is both 
past and present when it comes to the rationale for the historical and 
continued mistreatment of the people of Puerto Rico.
  It is time for that mistreatment to change--not just by doing right 
by Puerto Rico at this moment, at their hour of need. Yes, it is time 
for President Trump to command that FEMA and the U.S. military and the 
powers that be in Puerto Rico turn the lights back on right now. 
Congress should give Puerto Rico every cent they need.
  I am glad that we came together this week to approve the latest round 
of emergency aid, but it is long past time that we addressed the 
second-class treatment we have given the people of Puerto Rico for 
decades. Even that racist 1901 Supreme Court decision contemplated that 
the territories' unequal status could only be justified temporarily. It 
is time to untie the hands of the Puerto Rican people and ensure that 
they have full economic and political rights.
  I hope my colleagues will join me in this conversation in the coming 
months. It is just as important as the one we are having on emergency 
response because if anything good can come from the disaster of 
Hurricane Maria, maybe it is that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.