Pedro Pierluisi

Last month, I formally requested emergency assistance from FEMA to stabilize our power system by providing additional generation assets and accelerating work on our transmission and distribution grid.

There has been a lot of progress in fixing structural issues in our schools.

Well, one thing FEMA is doing is actually funding a public affairs campaign, public education campaign, encouraging people to build up to code.

We need to do public-private partnerships for both transmission and distribution and generation, and actually split the two so that there is no monopoly in Puerto Rico.

Congress should call for a vote on the political future of Puerto Rico and commit to implementing the will of the majority.

We cannot repair the units or give them even regular maintenance, as they should.

That is a game-changer. So, that is new.

For about 3 years, the spending that happened in Puerto Rico was emergency spending by FEMA.

I will try to be brief, but----

What is being done with the billions of dollars in aid? What are the plans? When will we see results?

a critical aspect of Fiona's recovery is the grid stabilization plan announced this week.

Canceling that contract is, to me, a nightmare.

LUMA is represented at this hearing, so you can ask them directly.

I am confident that we could reach that goal by 2025, because there are a lot of projects in the pipeline.

The people of Puerto Rico voted and chose permanent union with the United States through statehood as their path forward.

We are coming here to be treated the same as our fellow American citizens.

Having a plan of adjustment confirmed by the Federal court is absolutely essential, because it would stabilize PREPA's finances.

We need to improve our energy system so we don't have this power disruption for so long after a major disaster.

There is oversight on LUMA from so many quarters.

The debt needs to be the lower the better.

I am not going to support any restructuring that is not sustainable, that is not affordable.

I am disappointed that PREPA and the Energy Bureau are not here today.

I am devoting--it is my call--$500 million of CDBG-MIT funding to provide, basically, solar systems with batteries to roughly 25,000 low-income households.

There is an energy transformation law in Puerto Rico, which was approved on a bipartisan basis in 2018.

I believe it increases resiliency in the sense that you are making these households more self-sufficient.