WASHINGTON – House Natural Resources Committee chair Rob Bishop, R-Utah, visited Puerto Rico Friday as part of a multi-day trip to meet with commonwealth officials and groups as Congress continues to debate a reasonable solution for the territory's fiscal problems.
Bishop made his visit to "further discuss the crises the commonwealth faces and the circumstances and actions that are necessary to help Puerto Rico overcome its near and long-term challenges," said Parish Braden, a spokesperson for the Natural Resources Committee.
Jesus Manuel Ortiz, a spokesperson for Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla, confirmed the visit in a meeting with reporters in San Juan Friday and said Bishop and the governor discussed the need for any legislative package to respect Puerto Rico's autonomy.
Bishop's committee has held multiple hearings on Puerto Rico, which is struggling with roughly $70 billion in debt, since the beginning of the year. The chair and other federal legislators said after two congressional hearings held on Feb. 25 that they would begin trying to put together a reasonable plan by the March 31 deadline that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., imposed late last year.
While the ideas for a package have generally diverged depending on party affiliation, both Democrats and Republicans now seemingly agree that any solution will have to combine some type of restructuring with a federal oversight board. There is still debate about how broad the restructuring capabilities would be and how much power the oversight authority would be granted. But Bishop and others have frequently agreed with Garcia Padilla that any board or authority would have to respect Puerto Rico's autonomy.
Some legislators and groups that have been focused on Puerto Rico, like the San Juan-based Center for a New Economy, have also broached the idea of including provisions designed to provide economic growth in any legislative proposal, such as an extension of the Earned Income Tax Credit or better access to federal healthcare funds.
Garcia Padilla reiterated those potential ideas for a helpful legislative package in a prepared statement Friday, saying that Puerto Rico's government urges "legislation to promote the sustainability of the island through comprehensive restructuring tools, federal monitoring, and measures of economic growth."
"Congress owes the 3.5 million American citizens living in Puerto Rico an opportunity to fight for their future," he added.
Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico's nonvoting member of Congress, said he is grateful that Bishop took the time to travel to Puerto Rico to "observe the territory's challenges firsthand and to speak personally with island leaders."
"It is clear that Chairman Bishop is approaching this problem in good faith, and is working hard to navigate all of the policy and political implications of different courses of legislative action," Pierluisi said. "That is precisely as it should be, because politics is the art of the possible."
He added that any solution Congress proposes should, in addition to providing restructuring and temporary oversight, "improve Puerto Rico's discriminatory treatment under federal law."
