Political Quotes

“I come to the floor tonight to discuss Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States since 1898. Millions of residents have been citizens since 1917, nearly 100 years. This community of 3.5 million people is facing economic, fiscal, and liquidity problems. What are we doing about it here in Congress? We are not doing anything. That needs to change, and it needs to change now. We spent 10 years watching Puerto Rico suffer through a recession. We spent months here in Congress discussing what to do. There have been a lot of ideas--some popular, some controversial. I can say that, as the ranking member on the Energy Committee, I have heard many ideas, but now is the time to act. We need to allow Puerto Rico to restructure. That is, we need to give them the same opportunities that we gave to average American citizens and municipalities to restructure their debt--the same that we gave to Wall Street when they were in a financial crisis, the same brink that we were almost on when we had our own economic problems. Yet there are some here in the halls of Congress who would rather listen to hedge funds and make sure they are prioritized in a debt restructuring than actually putting in place debt restructuring. I propose a two-part, no-cost approach that will be most effective and least controversial to help us out of this situation.…”