House hopes for strong showing on Puerto Rico bill

The House wants to run up the score on a Puerto Rico bill, hoping that a strong bipartisan vote could clear a path for speedy Senate consideration.

After weeks of negotiations, the chamber appears set to pass a bill addressing the island’s debt crisis Thursday. But with a skeptical Senate awaiting the measure, bill backers want to put forward a strong showing.

{mosads}“The bottom line is, the better the vote here, the less likely it’s going to come back in a significantly altered form,” said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah).

Both parties are sounding a confident tone on the measure, which has earned the rare backing of both Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

But it was also clear Wednesday that both sides are trying to button up as much support as possible in a bid to push to Senate to take the measure as-is.

Members of the Senate have been slow to embrace the House package, with many saying they are waiting for the House to actually pass the bill before considering it. Sources closely following the bill believe that a strong House vote could help sell the Senate on accepting the bill with minimal changes, but if the bill just squeaks through or actually fails, the Senate could decide to start again from scratch.

The overall message from the bill’s proponents in the House and the White House is that the package is truly a compromise: Both sides see flaws, but it’s the best, and likely only, option to save the island’s finances and the 3.5 million American citizens living there.

The bill would establish an outside fiscal control board and allow the island to restructure its roughly $70 billion in outstanding debt.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew huddled with House Democrats Wednesday to discuss the Puerto Rico bill and acknowledged lingering gripes.

“It’s hard. There are things in it that neither side would’ve done if they were writing it alone, but it’s a compromise,” he said.

Meanwhile, President Obama met separately at the White House with a handful of key Puerto Rican lawmakers that could exert considerable influence on the measure. In attendance were Reps. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), José Serrano (D-N.Y.) and Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), as well as Rep. Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting delegate, according to a White House official.

Pierluisi supports the bill, while Serrano and Velazquez praised recent changes to the legislation without an explicit endorsement. Gutiérrez opposes the bill and promised last month to “actively work among my Democratic colleagues in the House to defeat” it.

Coming out of their own private meeting Wednesday, GOP leaders were sounding confident on the measure, which took weeks of intense private negotiations to finalize.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said he did not hear any serious reservations from rank-and-file Republicans at the meeting, suggesting there could be strong GOP support for the measure.

“We whipped it last night and it’s scheduled to come on the floor — that tells me the whip was good,” he said.

However, it’s clear not all conservatives are on board. Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, is urging Republicans to reject the measure. The group is including votes on the bill on its lawmaker scorecard and argues the bill does not do enough to trim regulations to boost the island’s private sector while barring creditors from taking the island to court over unpaid debts.

While the House is set to act Thursday, how quickly the Senate will take it up is an open question. One line of thinking is that the Senate could pass a Puerto Rico bill in the first two weeks of July, making it one of the last pieces of the business for the chamber before Congress breaks for a six-week recess.

But senators have declined to say whether they support the House bill, and tepid support from the House could bolster efforts to amend the bill.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) is pushing for significant changes. He rejects Democratic claims that the House bill can’t be seriously amended and still make it through a Republican-controlled Congress.

Menendez called the bill “blatant neocolonialism” and said his main concerns focus on the oversight board’s power and the process through which its appointed. He takes issue with a 5-2 supermajority required for certain debt restructuring decisions and lack of say from the Puerto Rican government on the makeup of the board.

“All this legislation will do is take away the rights of the 3.5 million American citizens that call Puerto Rico home,” said Menendez last month in a joint conference with Gutierrez.

Looming large over the proceedings is July 1, when the island is expected to default on roughly $2 billion of debt payments, an event experts warn could lead to a raft of messy litigation from spurned creditors.

Some investors in Puerto Rican debt warn that significant changes the bill at this late juncture carry significant risks.

“The bill is a well thought out and constructive compromise which will help stabilize the Puerto Rican fiscal crisis and thus avoid potentially dramatic costs to taxpayers,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who is working with a group of island creditors supportive of the measure. ”Changing it at this late date, with the July 1st deadline looming, would be a serious mistake and truly counterproductive.”

Gregg is also a columnist for The Hill.

And things are getting worse for Puerto Rico beyond missed payments. Puerto Rico’s only active air ambulance company announced Tuesday that it would no longer service the island’s patients, according to The Associated Press. The company said it was halting flights because talks broke down with island officials over making payments on unpaid bills.

And the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimate that 25 percent of the island’s residents will be infected with Zika by the end of the year.

Rafael Bernal and Sarah Ferris contributed.