The Tax Bill Is the Latest Reminder That Republicans Don’t Care About Puerto Rico

At this point, you might think that there is little more to say about the Republican Party's trillion-dollar tax reform grift, a sloppy, convoluted abomination hurtling towards passage on Capitol Hill despite the fact that a majority of Americans actively oppose it. What if I told you, though, that in addition to telling working- and middle-class Americans that a gigantic tax break for the wealthy will actually benefit them, the bill also finds a creative new way to make life even harder for Puerto Rico, where one million American citizens still don't have access to power more than two months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island?

Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, is not a foreign jurisdiction, but it is treated as one under the tax code. And as outlined by CNBC, provisions of the bill designed to discourage companies from shifting jobs overseas would apply to business operations conducted in Puerto Rico, too. In particular, a new 12.5 percent tax on intellectual property income in foreign jurisdictions means that major medical device manufacturers that have created jobs in Puerto Rico will suddenly have little incentive to keep them there. The island's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, has urged Congress to write a temporary exemption from the tax into their year-end spending bill, a simple and common-sense request to which Republicans on the Hill have yet to publicly respond. Paul Ryan's "absolute commitment" to providing Puerto Rico with the resources necessary for recovery didn't even make it to Christmas.
Taking action that would trigger a massive exodus of dependable, well-paying jobs from a place where unemployment was a problem before Maria—and where thousands of displaced people stood in long lines after the storm to collect unemployment benefits worth, at most, a few hundred dollars a month—is exactly the opposite of what the island needs right now. But there already existed plenty of evidence that Republicans in Washington don't give a damn about Puerto Rico, outside of the opportunities the situation might present to enrich others at the island's expense. The tax bill, it turns out, is just another mechanism for doing more of the same.