Bernie Sanders says there is an alternative to brutal austerity in Puerto Rico

[LongTomH]

From The Nation: There Is an Alternative to Brutal Austerity in Puerto Rico.

"Bernie Sanders has proposed a Marshall Plan for the islands, instead of an inhumane and antidemocratic oversight board."

Thousands of Puerto Ricans marched on May Day to protest the brutal austerity agenda that has been imposed on the commonwealth by an unelected and unaccountable federal oversight board.

Established in 2016 after enthusiastic lobbying by House Speaker Paul Ryan and his cronies on Wall Street and in Washington, the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico was designed to address a debt crisis by overruling local democracy. And it is doing just that. This month, the board moved to cut pensions that sustain families across the islands, which were ravaged by hurricanes and tropical storms in 2017; to force the consolidation of agencies that are essential to rebuilding Puerto Rico; to reduce sick leave and vacation pay for the public workers who struggled to maintain civil society; to slash aid to Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities; and to cut funding for its largest public university.

The board’s interventions and proclamations were described in a recent Bloomberg Markets report as “buttressing the optimism among investors that they stand to recover more on the bankrupt island’s [sic] debt than they previously expected.” But they have proven to be exceptionally unpopular with Puerto Rico’s elected leaders and the massive crowds that took to the streets on May Day. And rightly so. As a dissenting board member, Ana Matosantos, explained when the mid-April vote was taken: “I am simply not willing to support massive cuts to the safety net. I cannot support too much pain with too little promise.”

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Sanders has traveled to Puerto Rico, as a senator and a presidential contender, to decry the efforts of “vulture capitalists” and their congressional stooges to impose austerity on the island, arguing that: “In the midst of this massive human crisis, it is morally unacceptable that billionaire hedge-fund managers have been calling for even more austerity in Puerto Rico. Austerity will not solve this crisis.”

Unlike Ryan and the Speaker’s austerity board, Sanders has a smart, fiscally responsible, and forward-looking plan to stabilize Puerto Rico’s economy and to give the people who lives on the islands the resources and the opportunities they need to chart their own destiny.

Last fall, the senator proposed a legislative program to rebuild Puerto Rico—and the Virgin Islands, another US territory devastated by hurricanes in 2017. Sanders announced what has been referred to as “a Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico” by declaring that: “It is unconscionable that in the wealthiest nation in the world we have allowed our fellow citizens to suffer for so long. The full resources of the United States must be brought to bear on this crisis, for as long as is necessary. But we cannot simply rebuild Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands the way they were. We must go forward to create a strong, sustainable economy and energy system in both territories and address inequities in federal law that have allowed the territories to fall behind in almost every measurable social and economic criteria [sic].”

In all the discussion of Puerto Rico's problems, the Oversight Board and its neoliberal austerity policies have received little if any attention.