Darren Soto

It would increase the amount of Medicaid funding from $375 million a year to $400 billion a year for Puerto Rico.

I think that is one of the bright spots happening through Congress right now.

PROMESA was only a partial solution to the economic problems of Puerto Rico, and the imposition of the Oversight Board that has undemocratic power over decisions of the elected representatives of the people of Puerto Rico.

I agree, Leader Bhatia, the people of Puerto Rico should be deciding the public services.

Let the people of Puerto Rico decide what the benefits and the essential services are, and then they have no issues on reporting, OK, you have to balance your budget, OK, we will do it, to get out of PROMESA.

If we could just put a switch into this bill, Mr. Chairman, to make the Trump administration release the funds, I think we would actually resolve this.

One thing I continue to hear from a lot of folks on the island and in my district and others is about this idea of eliminating the debt.

The good news is we have already passed bipartisan legislation to create Medicaid parity and, just recently, last week, to help low-income seniors on Medicare.

I believe, in the end, that this restructuring, which enables it to be sustainable, provides those creditors with a better chance of a reasonable repayment of what is affordable than had no alternative to PROMESA been put in place.

It is a complex history, the history of the debt of Puerto Rico. You have so much to do with both the relationship between the territory and the Federal Government--936, underfunding of Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, child tax…

What about the DOI reorganization plan? No documents have been provided yet. What specific executive privilege is being raised there?

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge leasing, no documents provided. What is the specific executive privilege--what is the nature of the executive privilege being claimed there?

What about incidents of non-compliance by BLM? What is the specific executive privilege or privileges, the grounds for them being asserted there?

So, for the mountain-top removal mining study--few documents. What is the privilege being asserted there?

I commit to getting back to you ASAP regarding if we have those privilege logs.

But, again, no invocation of executive privilege or any other privileges, merely adherence to making sure we are responsive to legislative oversight.

I can say with near certainty executive privilege is not being asserted by the Department.

What is the specific executive privilege or privileges, the grounds for them being asserted there?

Well, we should know what privileges are being asserted. Otherwise, you could just be making it up.

We have already ruled out nuclear or carbon capture.

We are open to all of the above strategy on this ambitious net zero-carbon dioxide goal by 2050.

Our chairman has set out a goal of getting to net zero-carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

The facts that climate change is, in part at least, human-caused and it is an existential threat to humanity.

We had to create the 9/11 Fund afterwards and just amended it to help out

H.R. 2846 is a reasonable solution to improve veteran services by removing roadblocks and providing high level constituent services.