Why I Voted "No" on the PROMESA Bill

Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (CA-34) appeared on C-SPAN's Newsmakers show this past Sunday, where we addressed his recent vote on the PROMESA bill (H.R. 4900). A transcript of Chairman Becerra's remarks may be found below.

Chairman Becerra: "I respect the work that was done on this bill. That was a bipartisan bill -- both in its vote for and its votes against. Quite honestly, we need to see more work done like that. This is the difficulty for me: my state of California just a few years back was in a very difficult economic situation with its budget.

"We had a budget deficit the size of most states' entire budget. Our deficits were bigger than their budgets. We were going to have a really difficult time. Would I want a bill from Washington, D.C., telling the people of my state of California that: 1) the way to fix our economic crisis is to slice the working wages of the lowest income Californians by nearly half when they had no role in this hedge fund-driven debt crisis? 2) Would I want to see Californians be told that the people who will solve the restructuring that has to go on for California to get itself out of this economic difficulty to be people from outside of the state of California?

"I couldn't accept that and as much work as I know about the work that people put into this [the PROMESA bill], I'm not going to tell the American citizens of Puerto Rico that someone else should tell them how to govern themselves and get themselves back into economic prosperity. And I'm not going to tell hardworking Puerto Ricans, who make a little bit more than the minimum wage, that they're going to see their wages sliced in half because that's one of the provisions that some Members of Congress think has to be included to try to get Puerto Rico out of this crisis.

"It's like the Wall Street-driven housing crisis in 2008. A whole bunch of Americans lost their home; they had nothing to do with that crisis but they're the ones who paid the biggest prices. How many Wall Street bankers went to jail? I think we're still trying to find out."

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