End the Humanitarian Crisis and Empower the People of Puerto Rico

For far too long, the people of Puerto Rico have faced inadequate assistance and colonial exploitation in the wake of natural disasters, a decade-long crippling economic crisis, and unjust human suffering.

Puerto Rico has made draconian cuts including closing schools, massively cutting municipal budgets, and slashing the University of Puerto Rico’s budget in half; an act that threatened the University’s accreditation. All these measures were enacted in order to squeeze money into the coffers of Wall Street billionaires. Instead of investing in health care and education, money is being siphoned off to line the pockets of vulture capitalists who are profiting off of the suffering of the people of Puerto Rico.

Bernie understands that we need a government that responds to the needs of working families in Puerto Rico, not the greed of Wall Street vulture funds. When we are in the White House, we will implement a Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure, create good-paying jobs, transform its energy system toward renewable energy, guarantee healthcare as a human right and improve public schools and childcare facilities.

Bernie is fighting with us for a world where the people of Puerto Rico have a right to self-determination, democracy, and dignity. Working together, we will provide debt relief to Puerto Rico, dissolve the disastrous fiscal control board, stop treating Puerto Rico like a colony, and give the people of Puerto Rico the fundamental right to determine their own future.

At a time of unprecedented challenges for Puerto Rico, the next president must work to empower Puerto Rican leaders, communities, and advocates. As president, Bernie will:

• Finally repair the damage from Hurricanes Irma and Maria and the recent earthquakes and fully rebuild Puerto Rico. 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.
  
  • In 2017, Bernie introduced a Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico to completely rebuild Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands after the destruction of the hurricanes. The bill would provide $146 billion in federal funds to:
    
    • Build a resilient electrical grid powered by renewable energy.
    • Bring parity to the treatment of Puerto Ricans in federal programs such as SNAP, Medicare, and Medicaid.
    • Provide grants for economic development, local agriculture, transportation, housing, education, environmental remediation, and veterans services.
      
  • Bernie’s Green New Deal plan would guarantee Puerto Rico 100 percent sustainable energy, self-sufficiency, resilient internet and water infrastructure to ensure that Puerto Rico is prepared when the next hurricane or earthquake hits.
    
    • Through the Green New Deal, we will invest $238 billion to clean up Superfund sites including Vieques and $150 billion to clean up and revitalize Brownfields, and other areas and communities that have been polluted by the and other areas and communities that have been polluted by coal-fired power plants, industrial manufacturing, and the US military.
      
• Restore self-rule in Puerto Rico by ending the reign of greedy Wall Street vulture funds that have a stranglehold on Puerto Rico’s future, return control of Puerto Rico to the people of Puerto Rico and give them the debt relief it so desperately needs to rebuild with dignity.
  
  • In 2018 and 2019, Bernie introduced legislation to provide comprehensive debt relief to Puerto Rico and wrest control from Wall Street vultures funds and greedy billionaires to give control of Puerto Rico back to the people.
    
  • Bernie supports a U.S. congressionally-sanctioned and binding referendum where the Puerto Rican people would be able to decide on whether to become a state, an independent country, or to reform the current Commonwealth agreement. Bernie believes this is an issue that must be decided by the people of Puerto Rico.
    
  • In 2015, Bernie aggressively opposed the passage of PROMESA, a law that installed an un-democratic fiscal control board over the financial crisis in Puerto Rico. Instead, he proposed the Puerto Rico Humanitarian Relief Act, which would audit the debt, create a public restructuring agency with authority to lend to Puerto Rico and municipalities in order to facilitate necessary restructuring of debts, and provide bankruptcy protection.
    
  • The economic situation in Puerto Rico will not improve by eliminating more public schools, slashing pensions, laying off workers and allowing corporations to pay workers starvation wages. We need austerity for billionaire Wall Street hedge fund managers who have exacerbated the financial crisis in Puerto Rico. We don’t need more austerity for children in Puerto Rico who are going hungry. When we are in the White House, we will ensure that the federal government is doing everything in its power to fully rebuild Puerto Rico in a way that empowers the people of Puerto Rico to ensure self-determination.
    
• Ensure a strong social safety net for the People of Puerto Rico by ensuring access to health care, nutrition assistance, and veterans benefits. Bernie would end the practice of treating Puerto Ricans differently than Continental Americans in federal programs.
  
  • In 2019, he introduced a bill to end the practice of block grants for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and transition Puerto Rico to full participation in SNAP. It is unacceptable that a family of four in Puerto Rico receives a maximum benefit more than $200 lower than a family of four in the continental United States.
    
    • Bernie’s plan would let Puerto Rico provide a portion of SNAP benefits in the form of cash assistance as well as continue the Family Market Program.
      
  • Bernie would guarantee health care as a human right for everyone in the United States, including Puerto Rico, under his Medicare for All plan. In addition to ensuring comprehensive coverage to every Puerto Rican through Medicare for All, he will invest in Puerto Rico’s health care infrastructure and workforce to ensure everyone can get the care they need in their communities. He will:
    
    • Dramatically expand access to community health centers which provide primary medical, dental, and mental health care, as well as low-cost prescription drugs.
      
    • Create a $20 billion emergency trust fund to help states, territories, and local communities purchase hospitals that are in financial distress. Any time a hospital is put up for sale in Puerto Rico, the local community or the Commonwealth must have the right to buy it first with emergency financial assistance.
      
    • Bring more health care providers to Puerto Rico by increasing funding for the National Health Service Corps, which provides scholarships and loan-repayment to clinicians working in underserved communities.
      
    • Significantly expand the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education program to educate and train more primary care providers of color to provide primary care in underserved communities of color.
      
    • Drastically expand the Nurse Practitioner Residency Training Program, and the Nurse Faculty Loan Program to develop the workforce we need.
      
• Guarantee every Puerto Rican a quality education from child care through college.
  
  • Enact Bernie’s Free Child Care and Pre-K for All plan to ensure that access to high-quality, free child care and universal, full-day pre-k is guaranteed for all Puerto Rican parents who want and need early care and educational opportunities for their young children. And we will ensure living wages, benefits, and strong collective bargaining rights for child care and early education professionals in Puerto Rico.
    
  • Bernie opposes the privatization and voucherization of Puerto Rico’s public education system. Instead of privatization and voucherization, Bernie will make transformative investments in Puerto Rico’s schools, teachers, and students through his Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education.
    
    • This includes passing Pass Bernie and Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Universal School Meals Program Act to provide universal, year-round, free breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner at school. The bill will also:
      
      • Eliminate all school meal lunch debt and end “lunch debt shaming.”
      • Expand Summer EBT across the country to ensure no student goes hungry during the summer.
      • Provide a $0.30 per meal incentive for schools that procure 30 percent of their food from local sources.
      • Bernie’s College for All plan would cancel all outstanding student debt, including for Puerto Ricans— both public and private loans; make all public colleges and universities, including the University of Puerto Rico, tuition and debt-free; and tax Wall Street to pay for it.
        
• Guarantee everyone in Puerto Rico affordable, high-speed Internet. Bernie will provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states/territories to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks. His plan will:
  
  • Perform a full review of the post-disaster response to the communications crisis in Puerto Rico and ensure broadband and telecommunications services are swiftly restored.
    
  • Ensure any new broadband infrastructure is resilient to the effects of climate change.
    
  • Require large, private internet service providers to complete a broadband resiliency review.
    
  • Implement “dig once” policies to build dedicated fiber conduits with all road construction and improvements projects.
    
  • Ensure disasters are not used by corporations to reap taxpayer-subsidized profits, and that all rebuilding funding goes to restoring service and improving resiliency.
    
  • Build a modern smart grid to ensure we have a resilient, secure, and intelligent electric grid system that is capable of managing high amounts of renewable energy, maximizing efficiency, and keeping our internet services up and running during the worst climate emergencies.
    
• Increase wages and protect pensions and workers.
  
  • As president, Bernie will sign an executive order to impose a moratorium on future pension cuts and would reverse the cuts to retirement benefits that have already been made.
    
  • We will not allow the un-democratic fiscal control board to determine wages in Puerto Rico. Bernie will raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour for every Puerto Rican.
    
  • Work with the Commonwealth and local governments to reverse the privatization of public services and support the creation of more good-paying public sector jobs.
    
  • Guarantee every worker in Puerto Rico, public and private sector, the right to unionize through his Workplace Democracy Plan.
    
• Guarantee every Puerto Rican housing as a human right.
  
  • Enact Bernie’s Housing for All plan to build permanently affordable, accessible units to end Puerto Rico’s housing crisis and combat gentrification.
    
  • Fully fund tenant-based Section 8 rental assistance at $410 billion over the next 10 years and make it a mandatory funding program for all eligible Puerto Rican households.
    
  • Enact a tenants bill of rights that includes a rent control standard, a “just-cause” requirement for evictions, and ensuring the right to counsel in housing disputes.
    
  • Invest $180 billion over 10 years in sustainable retrofits for public housing through the Green New Deal and $70 billion in the Housing for All plan to repair, modernize, and build new public housing including making all public housing accessible and providing access to high-speed broadband for all public housing residents.
    
• Guarantee every person with a disability in Puerto Rico the right to community living through Bernie’s Fighting for Disability Rights plan. This includes but is not limited to:
  
  • Guaranteeing health care, including mental health care and home- and community-based services and supports without waitlists, asset or income restrictions, as a human right to everyone in Puerto Rico.
    
  • Protecting and expanding the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs by reversing the Trump Administration’s attack on SSDI/SSI, ending the massive disability application backlog, putting a stop to SSI’s draconian asset test and marriage penalty, and raising the SSI benefit level to 125 percent of the poverty level, lifting millions out of poverty.
    
• Protect the rights and safety of the LGBTQ+ community and women in Puerto Rico. This includes but is not limited to:
  
  • Immediately reauthorizing and expanding the Violence Against Women Act.
    
  • Passing the Equality Act, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act and other bills to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.
    
• Expand and improve the VA for the more than 75,000 veterans living in Puerto Rico and more than 300,000 Puerto Rican veterans total.
  
  • Eliminate the VA benefits backlog, fully fund and resource the VA, and reverse the disastrous privatization of services for veterans.
    
  • Fill the nearly 50,000 vacancies at the VA in Bernie’s first year.
    
  • Provide at least $62 billion in new funding to repair, modernize and rebuild VA infrastructure.
    
  • Expand the VA’s Caregivers Program as well as mental health services for veterans.
    
  • Reform harmful VA regulations that restrict access to care and benefits based on character of discharge.