Make Puerto Rico a state
Time to rectify wrongs endured by these vital citizens
Democrats have a lot to be angry about, and a lot to fix. After right-wing propagandists spread the big lie that the 2020 election was rigged and thereby propelled the U.S. Capitol invasion, it is more urgent than ever to pass compromise election reform to stop voter suppression, and to restore the “fair and balanced” standard for mass audience television networks. But the 50-50 Senate will continue to be a challenge.
After using bare majority votes to ram through hundreds of judicial appointments to federal courts — including two really extreme Supreme Court justices — naturally Republican Minority Leader Mitch Mcconnell would now like to use the filibuster to stop nominees. Cheating is now the heart of the Republican Party’s playbook: one set of rules for us, and another set for our opponents. It is not enough for them that the Senate is already affirmative action for small states on steroids.
Nowhere is this clearer than in congressional representation itself. Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. have nearly 4 million residents — about as many as Wyoming, Alaska, both the Dakotas, and Montana combined, with their 10 senators. And still Republicans often argue that there would be something “unfair” about giving citizens in Puerto Rico and D.C. the same weight in our legislature and in ratifying amendments that citizens in all 50 states enjoy.
This is a kind of apartheid. These 4 million Americans are second-class citizens under our current rules, much like women before they got the vote a century ago. In Puerto Rico alone, almost 3 million Black and brown Americans are denied a vote in our presidential elections, although majorities on the island have preferred statehood in three different referenda during the last decade. Puerto Rico’s current ambiguous status as half-in, half-out cannot continue.
While achieving statehood or at least congressional representation may be harder for
D.C., Puerto Rico’s coming petition for statehood should be a top priority for the Biden administration in 2021. This is a matter of fundamental fairness. How Puerto Ricans might vote in future elections is totally irrelevant (and actually not so predictable as some wrongly assume). Of course, when Puerto Rico has two senators, four House members, and six Electoral College votes, its concerns — such as infrastructure needs and larger hurricanes driven by climate change — will be respected by Republican and
Democratic administrations. It will be harder to follow Trump’s method of treating this land, which the United States annexed by military force in 1898, like dispensable garbage. Good leaders in both major parties will be able to win Puerto Rican votes when they give these loyal Americans the same respect that other citizens receive.
Of course, Democratic leaders have a lot to do given the national wreckage left to them by Trump and his propagandists. After the March 2021 stimulus act, a long-awaited infrastructure and green development bill is up next, perhaps with a new effort to pass universal background checks for gun purchases. But Puerto Rico should not be kept waiting too long. Democrats need to use what leverage they have, which may only last a few months, to push a Puerto Rico admission bill forward with support from a few principled Republicans. And hopefully more than a few. After all, statehood for Puerto Rico has been in the Republican Party platform for decades.
The distracting issue of the island’s debt also appears near to resolution. Debt restructuring and statehood will massively improve investment outlooks and new business opportunities. So the law admitting the island as our 51st state may not need to address this topic beyond stipulating that, like all other states, Puerto Rico would remain liable for debts it already incurred as a territory.
Finally, when the votes in the
House and Senate come, admission of Puerto Rico as a state should not be subject to the grand injustice of filibuster practices. Only 51 votes should be required for Senate passage. As policy analyst Jon Walker has rightly argued, that is because admission of new states is not an Article I power of the legislature. Senate rules should never violate the meaning of Article V and VI clauses that give Congress special duties on topics like state admission, constitutional amendments, and honoring state calls for a constitutional convention. If necessary, the Democratic majority should stipulate in filibuster reform that statehood enabling or admission acts, like budget bills, require only simple majorities.
The time has come to welcome all Puerto Rico residents as equals under American law and thereby rectify in some small measure the long train of wrongs done to this vital part of the United States.
Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. have nearly 4 million residents — about as many as Wyoming, Alaska, both the Dakotas, and Montana combined, with their 10 senators. And still Republicans often argue that there would be something “unfair” about giving citizens in Puerto Rico and D.C. the same weight in our legislature and in ratifying amendments that citizens in all 50 states enjoy.