Debate Nirvana

For years, the Puerto Rican economy has been in decline, and is now on the brink of disaster, with $72 billion of overall debt and an unemployment rate twice that of the mainland. If the country's statehood goes into effect, many more jobs and opportunities would be available to Puerto Ricans, lowering the amount of people in poverty and the amount of money they owe for debt. According to records from CNN, Puerto Rico is costing the US over 22 billion a year, but as a state, it can contribute nearly 2 billion to the US Treasury every year. If Puerto Rico gets statehood, it can get better access to things like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, highway funding, and more. Resident Commissioner Piersluisi said that “statehood would inject an additional $9 to $10 billion into Puerto Rico’s economy each year.”

Our weighing mechanism is “what’s best for the Puerto Rican people” and who would know what’s best for them but the Puerto Rican people themselves? A 2012 referendum voted on by 80% of the Puerto Rican people showed a majority (54% of the electorate) disagreed with "the present form of territorial status", with full statehood as the preferred option among 61% of  those who voted for a change of status. Following the vote, the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico enacted a concurrent resolution to request the President and Congress of the United States to end its current status as an unincorporated U.S. territory and begin the process of admission to the union as a state. In 2012, the US Congress declined to vote on statehood, but the US government is holding a new referendum on statehood this year.

If the tax system was working now, Puerto Rico would not have such a depressed economy. Becoming a state would give Puerto Rico access to an extra $20 billion in federal funds every year. And even though residents would have to begin paying federal income taxes, the hope is that their wages and other assets would rise as companies began to view Puerto Rico as a politically stable place to invest. Meanwhile, the federal government would collect billions in new personal and corporate income taxes.  A finance professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Professor Carlos Colon stated that Puerto Rico “should be better off than the 50 states, because its federal taxes are lower. And we are not. We’re not even catching up. Every one of the 50 states is better off economically than Puerto Rico. That’s probably the best argument in favor of statehood as an economic strategy.”

The citizens of Puerto Rico have made the ultimate sacrifice fighting for the American way of life and they should be rewarded with all of the benefits of statehood. The former President of the University of Puerto Rico, Jose Saldana, has spoken in support of statehood, saying “We have significantly contributed in the defense of our Nation at home and abroad in all the major wars and foreign engagements. More than 200,000 of us have honorably served in the U.S. Armed Forces and have fought and died for our democratic way of life. Proportionately we have experienced more war casualties in all U.S. wars than any state of the union. And yet we are deprived of the most basic rights of citizenship in a representative democracy: The right to vote and the right to be represented in the political body that enacts the laws by which we must abide.  It would be a very unfair and undemocratic act of prejudice on the part of Congress ,and a national discredit, to ignore the plight for equal rights of 3.7 million of American citizens.