Two Democratic senators have agreed to co-sponsor a bill that would allow Puerto Rico's municipalities to use federal bankruptcy laws, the U.S. territory's representative in Congress, Pedro Pierluisi, said and Reuters reported yesterday. Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy and Mark Warner, who sits on the Senate's banking and finance committees, will join 12 other Democratic senators currently sponsoring the bill. The bill (S. 1774) was introduced last week to give Puerto Rico's municipalities and public corporations access to chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code to adjust their debts. It is a companion bill to an identical bill (H.R. 870) that Pierluisi introduced in the House earlier this year.
