Puerto Rico Is A Man-Made Disaster

Months after hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, what should have been an example of how one of the most powerful nations in the world could rebuild a territory is instead an example of a man-made catastrophe now moving to the mainland.

Today, about 60 percent of Puerto Rico’s population has access to reliable electric power. Access to potable water is compromised. Food and jobs are scarce, and houses are uninhabitable. More than 40 percent of schools do not have electricity. Thousands of police officers are not showing up to work, and violent crime is rampant.

President Donald Trump’s inability to effectively manage the federal agencies tasked with helping U.S. citizens in need has only compounded the problems created by Congress’ historically discriminatory policies toward Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican government’s ineptitude at addressing local corruption.

One of the roles of the president is managing federal agencies. If the response to this year’s hurricanes has taught us anything, it’s that the agencies charged with assisting the Puerto Ricans are underfunded, understaffed and overextended. Take, for example, the federal response to the housing problem on the island. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers collected tarps under Operation Blue Roof, but five months into the crisis, thousands of them are in storage. The USACE has fulfilled a little more than half of the requests, leaving upwards of 30,000 households without roofs.

Congress should stop treating Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens and step up to finance and supervise the rebuilding of the island.

But the executive branch is only part of the problem.

For more than a century, Congress, with the support of the Supreme Court, has governed Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory ― that is, a territory that can be treated as a foreign country when it is convenient for the federal government. As a result, Congress has frequently authorized less funding for the development of Puerto Rico’s economy and federal assistance programs than it gives to states; it has also provided insufficient funds for infrastructure repair.

Federal lawmakers, again with the support of the Supreme Court, responded to the financial crisis in Puerto Rico by passing the Promesa Act. It declared that Puerto Rico was not a commonwealth with any degree of sovereignty, but was merely a territorial possession of Congress. The legislation created a financial overview board to manage the local economy in order to guarantee that the Puerto Rican government would pay an unpayable debt.

Even before two major hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico’s infrastructure last year, its government wasn’t able to generate sufficient revenue to pay its public debt obligations (some estimates place the debt at over $150 billion). Yet Congress, while it assumed control over Puerto Rico’s economy and while its financial oversight board sought to impose some of the failed austerity measures used in Kansas and Greece, has simultaneously refused to assume responsibility over the economic woes afflicting its territory.