Chicago Tribune Editorial - Newt? Bill? Report to San Juan

Newt? Bill? Report to San Juan
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Published May 10, 2006

Unable to resolve a standoff that has shut down much of their government for more than a week, Puerto Rico's governor and legislative leaders have punted. A four-member panel--an economist, a former Supreme Court president, a former budget director and a Senate aide--now must do what the governor and lawmakers were elected to do: solve the island's budget crisis.

What a fiasco! Political intransigence has prevented the parties from passing a budget since Gov. Anibal Acevedo-Vila was (barely) elected in 2004. Costs increased and the population grew, but the government limped along under the 2004 budget until it ran out of money on May 1. With two months to go in this fiscal year, Puerto Rico is short more than $500 million. The governor was forced to furlough 95,000 public employees and close 43 government agencies.

It's tempting to draw parallels between Puerto Rico's situation and the 1995 shutdown of the federal government, when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton dug in their heels over spending. Public buildings, parks and monuments were closed and hundreds of thousands of federal workers were sent home when the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress couldn't agree on a stopgap bill to keep things running. Vacations were disrupted, paychecks were late and citizens were inconvenienced. But some hard choices were negotiated, and the standoff ended with no lasting damage to the republic.

Things are different in Puerto Rico, where close to half of the idled workers are teachers. Half a million children are out of school, with only two weeks left in the term. More than 400,000 kids who might otherwise be gleeful about the unplanned holiday are cut off from the free breakfast and lunch served at school.

Thousands of public workers have filed for unemployment and food stamps, and there are worries about private-sector layoffs if consumer spending falls off. On Monday, Moody's Investors Service downgraded some of Puerto Rico's bonds to junk status because political leaders haven't lived up to their promises to clean up the mess. That failure stems from a bitter divide between the parties, whose agendas center not on liberal or conservative beliefs but on the question of Puerto Rico's future.

Acevedo's Popular Democratic Party favors the status quo, under which Puerto Rico remains a U.S. territory. Its 4 million people are American citizens but cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress.

Both houses of the legislature are controlled by the New Progressive Party, which wants Puerto Rico to become the 51st state. A third, much smaller party favors independence.

In three referendums since 1967, Puerto Ricans have voted by narrow margins to keep the status quo. In December, a presidential task force recommended yet another vote on the matter.

With Puerto Rico's 2008 election inexorably approaching, none of the major players wants to agree to anything that might reflect well on the others. The result is that everyone looks bad. The parties spent the last week hurling insults and stomping out of meetings, even though they weren't all that far apart on a solution.

So it has come to this: Puerto Rico's elected leaders threw up their hands, turned their work over to a commission and promised to do whatever that commission tells them to do. This workaround has been billed as a compromise, but there's a better word for it. It's a copout. The people of Puerto Rico deserve better.