Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the significance of the unprecedented events now occurring in Puerto Rico. According to the May 16 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, ``The legal brawl over Puerto Rico's bankruptcy begins this week, and it will be long and ugly.'' As we have seen in Greece and Detroit, what is happening in Puerto Rico should be a wake-up call for fiscally distressed States--meaning our 50 States, our cities, and our territories--to get their own houses in order. It is the canary in the mine that ought to be available to everybody. At the same time, it should be a cautionary tale for those who seek to extend similar bankruptcy authority to our own 50 States. In 2015, after years of fiscal mismanagement and borrowing to finance their operations, Puerto Rico declared that its debt was unpayable and had to be restructured; however, because Puerto Rico lacked access to chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code, restructuring its complex debt outside of the court presented a challenge. I held a hearing in the Judiciary Committee to examine this issue in December of 2015. We learned at that hearing that while bankruptcy is an effective tool to restructure debt, it merely treats the symptom and it doesn't solve the disease. I told you so, in that vein. I shared my views and the views of many others that unless Puerto Rico addressed its fiscal mismanagement woes, extending bankruptcy authority alone couldn't fix the problem.…”