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Tuesday marked 90 days since Hurricane Maria brutalized the island of Puerto Rico. The situation on the ground is still dire—with only 66% of power generation having returned, more than 1 million people still without power and more than 259,000 people having left the island for Florida since the storm. Puerto Ricans are facing a grim reality as the winter holidays and new year approach. This would be the time for the Republicans in Congress to really invest resources and commit to rebuilding the island in cooperation with the local government. They could and should do that since it would be the humane and appropriate thing to do. But, why bother? Instead, they are busy passing a massively destructive tax bill—which will only hurt the people of Puerto Rico even more.
As the U.S. island struggles to climb out of a $70 billion debt crisis and recover from the devastation of Hurricane Maria, House Republicans voted Tuesday to impose a 12.5 percent tax on intellectual property income made by U.S. companies operating on the island and a minimum 10 percent tax on their profits in Puerto Rico. The Senate passed the measure early Wednesday.
That means that businesses with operations in Puerto Rico will pay higher taxes than their counterparts on the U.S. mainland, which puts industries and jobs on the island at risk.
The provision, tucked into the GOP’s tax reform bill, was intended to stop American companies from dodging federal taxes by shifting their profits overseas. But because the U.S. tax code treats Puerto Rico as a foreign territory, business operations on the island will get hit.
Seriously, Republicans? This is really what you are doing right now? To say that this is unbelievable would be an understatement. At this point, its not even worth asking if they have no shame. We know that they absolutely do not. It would seem that the self-appointed party of morals and family values has fully forsaken any desire to help anyone beyond the super rich and corporations and they aren’t at all shy about it hiding it. That whole “compassionate conservative thing”? That’s dead and gone. We can go ahead and bury that trope right now. This is a party bent on punishing the marginalized and Puerto Rico is squarely in its target.
Meanwhile, its left to Democrats to fight like hell against this. But with the tax bill already having passed the Senate and going back to the House of Representatives on Wednesday for another vote, it looks like a done deal.
Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), who is Puerto Rican and who opposed the tax bill along with all other House Democrats, warned her GOP colleagues that the provision will visit another type of storm on the island: an “economic hurricane.” [...]
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has said the tax provision would be “a huge blow” that would negatively affect 50 percent of the island’s gross national product, 30 percent of the government’s revenue and more than 250,000 jobs.
Nonetheless, Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the tax bill, including every GOP lawmaker from Florida. Rosselló warned Monday that those lawmakers will pay at the polls in 2018 for hurting Puerto Rico in its time of need.
Rosselló has promised that he will do all he can to mobilize Puerto Ricans on the mainland to vote Republicans out in 2018. As well he should—we need to vote every single Republican that supported this monstrosity out.
Everybody has seen the damage of the storm and yet policy decisions go in the opposite direction of where they should go,” Rosselló said in an interview with POLITICO on Tuesday. “We’re not just going to stand by. We are going to take action.”[...]
So far, he figures they can sway congressional district votes in 14 states, including Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. He pointed to the influence of Florida’s 2.7 million Cuban-Americans, a powerful and well-organized constituency.
Rosselló has been trading barbs this week with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over Rubio's support for the tax bill.
What’s so terribly upsetting about this is that the majority of Americans know that this tax bill is a disaster waiting to happen. This is true of the Americans on the mainland and on the island (though the government seems to have forgotten that they, too, are U.S. citizens). Yet, the very people elected to represent the American people in Washington are proceeding on their own accord and that of the lobbyists and wealthy donors, regardless of what we want and what we know will only screw us over in the end.
Its even worse for the people of Puerto Rico. Relegated to second-class status ever since they became an American territory, they continue to be rendered voiceless and harmed by those in power. “Having no representation is a clear disadvantage and if you need any more evidence of this just look at the tax reform,” Rosselló said. “Just because we don’t have representation we got railroaded.”
This is abominable. First, and most immediate, we’ve got to do everything we can to get Puerto Ricans the help they need. Then we’ve got to turn our energy to 2018 and get as many Republicans out as we can. The island, and the rest of our country, depend on it.