Puerto Rico to Capitol Hill: Territorial status is root cause of many woes – By Jim Wyss (Miami Herald) / April 28 2020
Hounded by the coronavirus and a steady stream of political scandals, Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez on Tuesday accused her enemies of trying to “tarnish” the island’s reputation on Capitol Hill and said it’s Washington’s own policies that have been keeping the U.S. territory from recovering from a myriad of crises.
In an eight-page letter to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Vázquez defended her administration’s handling of the pandemic and pushed back against insinuations that she had not gone far enough in rooting out fraud. The letter comes after Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent her a laundry list of questions on April 15 regarding the resignation of cabinet members and the status of ongoing corruption investigations.
In her response, Vázquez thanked Washington for recent financial aid and increased spending on the island, but said it was Puerto Rico’s status as a territory that had created “structural inequalities” that were undermining the island’s ability to respond to hardship.
“These inequitable policies lead to an overall quality of life in Puerto Rico that is below the standard of the states in multiple respects,” she wrote. “This disparate quality of life is the primary reason for Puerto Rico’s ongoing population loss, which is detrimental to Puerto Rico’s tax base, labor force, consumer demand, debt repayment capacity, and overall prospects for economic growth.”
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