On the recordJune 28, 2016
As I bring up--this is a provision I am just getting familiar with, and I am obviously very concerned about it. Through the Chair, I would say that I am very concerned about the fact that now we are going to turn over all this authority to people who can accept gifts. I don't know what that means and who is going to oversee that because they are going to be appointed in a process that I believe will probably be challenged as unconstitutional, which will also take the bill to a whole other level of legal uncertainty. But I wanted to go over this and ask about this point. It is my understanding that they are about $72 billion in debt. For fiscal year 2016, the debt payments will be about $4.1 billion. So making a full payment would require about 25 percent of their annual income. My understanding is that a significant part of this debt is the GO bonds and that various bonds have been issued. The question becomes, if your annual revenue is $17 billion a year, how are you going to reorganize this huge debt when your population is already at a 45-percent poverty rate? So I think all of us, in a normal situation, would say: Let the bankruptcy court figure that out. That is what I would do. I would say let the bankruptcy court figure that out because bankruptcy laws in the United States of America are fairer and they decide these issues. They decide what is fair treatment under the law. I certainly would prefer that.…
