On the Road . Puerto Rico| Bernie Sanders

[eridani]

1. Sanders to Senate Dems: Do You Stand with Puerto Rico or with Wall Street?

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/23/sanders-senate-dems-do-you-stand-puerto-rico-or-wall-street

After the latest version of the bill was unveiled last week, Sanders blasted the creation of this "undemocratic board," which he said "would have the power to slash pensions, cut education and health care, and increase taxes on working families in Puerto Rico."

"Even worse, Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker [Paul] Ryan would be in charge of handpicking a majority of the control board's members," Sanders said at the time, "while the people of Puerto Rico would be in charge of choosing none. That may make sense to the Tea Party and one of the largest trade groups representing Wall Street—groups that endorsed this legislation—but it makes absolutely no sense to me."

He doubled down on that critique in his letter on Monday, noting that right-wing organizations like Tea Party Forward and a major Wall Street trade group representing Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America endorsed the bill.

"We must make it clear that hedge fund managers on Wall Street cannot get a 100 percent return on Puerto Rican bonds they purchased for as little as 29 cents on the dollar yielding interest rates of up to 34 percent," Sanders wrote, "while the budget for hungry children in Puerto Rico would be cut."

"In my view," he said, "we must never give an unelected control board the power to make life and death decisions for the people of Puerto Rico without any meaningful input from them at all. We must not balance Puerto Rico's budget on the backs of children, senior citizens, the sick, and the most vulnerable people in Puerto Rico."