“Puerto Rico is like the last Tower Records: everything’s overpriced, everyone’s being laid off, and there is still a really weird number of Ricky Martin CDs”, said Oliver.
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McCarthy and House Speaker Paul Ryan have been adamant there will be no bailout.
Puerto Rico’s government is running out of money, partly because federal tax incentives that lured manufacturers were phased out by Congress a decade ago. This is an island, 100 miles across.
“So the next time your obnoxious friend tell you everything happens for a reason”, Oliver added, “you can simply say, ‘No, Dan, not the 1984 provision exempting Puerto Rico from bankruptcy protection”.
The analysts, whose firm manages more than $40 billion of municipal debt, said the legislation “represents a responsible framework for managing the unavoidable restructuring of Puerto Rico’s debt and other liabilities”. Labrador said he wants the committee’s bill to include language ensuring that “pensions are not getting any priority over the secure debt”. A more important deadline looms July 1 when around $2 billion in principle and interest payments come due.
Oliver jokes prior to the song that the USA has an obligation to rescue Puerto Rico as repayment for Miranda, whose parents were born there.
With vulture (or hedge) funds now circling, ready to pick apart the budgets of health and education services, Puerto Rico is officially at the brink.
And Puerto Rico’s troubles will benefit America if the bond market, sobered by a demonstration that government bonds can be risky, becomes a restraint on state legislatures by raising the cost of borrowing where the legislatures are most irresponsible.
True, the bill doesn’t do much to spur growth or reverse the exodus of Puerto Rico’s population to the mainland.
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That legislation is now stuck in the House Natural Resources Committee, whose staff has labored to craft a bill that can be tolerated by territorial officials, the Treasury Department, various bondholders and Republican lawmakers wary of any congressional intervention in private transactions. But as John Oliver pointed out on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, Puerto Rico faces a far more dire problem right now: a crushing debt crisis that’s seen an exodus of the island’s doctors, even as the Zika virus threatens to infect one in five people of its residents. The Hamilton star and writer rapped poignantly about the island “not-quite nation” that’s only “100 miles across”, imploring Congress to take action on behalf of the 3.5 million civilians, who are American citizens, in Puerto Rico.
