MTV Real World alum and Republican representative from Wisconsin Sean Duffy has sponsored a bill in the hope of solving Puerto Rico’s problems. The bill is titled HR 4900 “PROMESA.” I’ll give you three guesses as to what that means in English. If you guessed that the answer was “Fuck you Puerto Rico,” you would be technically wrong, but not figuratively wrong. This bill is a response to the debt crisis facing Puerto Rico. It unfolds like a loanshark scene out of a Scorsese picture. Go on down to Section 403 “First Minimum Wage in Puerto Rico.” Sounds like a good thing!
(1) in paragraph (1)—
(A) by striking “subsection (a)(1), any employer” and inserting “subsection (a)(1)—
“(A) any employer”;
(B) by striking the period at the end and inserting “; and”; and
(C) by adding at the end the following:
“(B) the Governor of Puerto Rico, subject to the approval of the Financial Oversight and Management Board established pursuant to section 101 of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, may designate a time period not to exceed five years during which employers in Puerto Rico may pay employees who are initially employed after the date of enactment of such Act a wage which is not less than $4.25 an hour.”; and
Great. The Republicans are making sure that Puerto Ricans have a minimum wage standard. Sure it’s low, but hey, it’s a start. Except, it isn’t a start at all.
Puerto Rico: Employers covered by the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) are subject to the Federal minimum wage of $7.25. Employers not covered by the FLSA will be subject to a minimum wage that is at least 70 percent of the Federal minimum wage or the applicable mandatory decree rate of $5.08, whichever is higher.
One of the things this bill does is lower the minimum wage in Puerto Rico from $7.25 to $4.25 an hour. What does Speaker of the House Paul Ryan have to say about this bill?
House Speaker Paul Ryan, in a statement applauding the House bill, took Puerto Rico’s government to task for the “troubling development” when the commonwealth legislature recently granted Gov. Alejandro García Padilla the authority to declare moratoria on debt service payments.
“Last week, the Puerto Rican government broke its fiscal obligations when it passed a moratorium on repaying any of its debt,” Ryan said.
The do-nothing Congress is still trying, very hard, to screw over the working-class citizens of the United States. At least until they get what they need: some of that sweet Koch money.
GOP lawmakers appear to be “hoping that they can score an unrelated ideological victory by holding something else hostage,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at today’s White House press briefing. “In this case, it’s the liquidity of the Puerto Rican government.”
“There’s no reason that we should let a longstanding political argument about the minimum wage have an impact on the ability of the Puerto Rican government to pay its bills,” Earnest said, though he didn’t explicitly say the White House would reject a Puerto Rico bill that contains the controversial minimum wage provision.