The House approved $20 billion-plus in aid to Puerto Rico, where recent earthquakes have set back the U.S. territory's recovery from Hurricane Maria.
The legislation, approved by a mostly party-line 237-161 vote, would provide more than $5 billion in emergency appropriations, mostly for housing aid, rebuilding infrastructure and repairing roads and bridges. It also includes $16 billion worth of tax breaks, mostly designed to extend refundable child tax credits for low-income families and to give the island’s residents equal access to an earned income tax credit for low-income earners.
But the White House has promised to veto the legislation, charging the island’s government of mismanagement and weak financial controls. It arrives in the Senate as a dead letter anyway. Puerto Rico’s non-voting congressional delegate, Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, a Republican, urged Democrats to look for common ground in hopes of getting agreement on an aid package the White House might accept.
The Trump administration has been slow to release $44 billion in money that’s already been approved for Puerto Rico, stoking the ire of Democrats, who mounted a high-profile campaign to try to force the administration to release aid more quickly. A White House veto threat took note of huge balances of“Over the last three years, we have allocated more than $40 billion for Puerto Rico disasters, and less than half of that has been spent,” said Rep.
“Don’t come here and say that ‘We have been there for Puerto Rico,’ ” said Rep. Nydia Velasquez “This administration has done everything within their power to withhold the money flowing to Puerto Rico.” The Puerto Rico aide issue is also infused with politics, as the population of Puerto Ricans on the mainland is growing while the island has steadily lost population during a long economic decline made worse by natural disasters. More than 200,000 residents of the U.S. commonwealth have relocated to Florida, New York and elsewhere.
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