Puerto Rico: Crisis In The Caribbean? (HuffPost Live)

Feb 27, 2014
7:37 AM

Yesterday HuffPost Live dedicated a segment to Puerto Rico’s latest economic woes. The beginning was a bit financially wonky but Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi joined the discussion.

We have to give credit Pierluisi for this discussion since he rarely brought up statehood and
looked at the status question from a more rational perspective. Here are just a few of the things he said:

I’d say that this debt that has piled up for decades in Puerto Rico is directly related to our status. We’re talking about two or three billion dollars that we’re losing every year because of our territorial status.

And this:

When you look at our status, the main economic development strategy was to give tax breaks to companies doing business in Puerto Rico. On the one hand, what we did was benefit from that strategy. But that got old. On the other side of the equation, Puerto Rico is not fully funded in many federal programs.

He also added this:

We want to have the same quality of life as our fellow citizens in the states, but we don’t because we’re not treated the same.