Top Senate Republicans with jurisdiction over Puerto Rico are working on a legislative proposal to help the commonwealth as it struggles with more than $70 billion of debt, countering a plan by the Obama administration, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The proposed bill will be finished “soon,” Robert Dillon, spokesman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said yesterday. Republicans would prefer that Puerto Ricans solve the crisis on their own, but if they can’t, lawmakers will probably seek to impose “something like” a federal control board, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said yesterday. Sen. Charles Grassley(R-Iowa) said in September that the island needs a federal control board to resist local pressure and implement necessary reforms such as trimming government jobs. The judiciary panel that Grassley leads will hold a hearing on Puerto Rico on Dec. 1. Dillon said the judiciary committee is also working on the legislative proposal. Read more.
For the latest news and analysis on Puerto Rico's financial crisis, be sure to visit ABI's "Puerto Rico in Distress" webpage.
