On the heels of his two-day tour of the earthquake devastation in Puerto Rico, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is calling for a modern “Marshall Plan” to rebuild schools, hospitals and power plants across the disaster-stricken island, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant reported. Blumenthal argues that the U.S. respond to the crisis within its own borders with an economic recovery program like the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, which sent billions of dollars in aid to Western Europe to rebuild infrastructure and modernize industries following World War II. Blumenthal proposes the Trump administration release available funds to Puerto Rico, the Senate approve $4.67 billion in supplemental funding — an initiative already approved by the U.S. House of Representatives — and the federal government remove the existing annual caps on Puerto Rico’s Medicaid, Medicare and SNAP spending.
