Puerto Rico: We Need to Do Better

I am heading to Puerto Rico to work with gymnasts and coaches at a training camp. I have been fortunate to travel to Puerto Rico before, and I am looking forward to being back on the island, doing what I love—working with these coaches and athletes.

But this trip comes at a very different moment.

And I keep coming back to one simple thought:

Puerto Rico is in the middle of a severe drought. Water is being rationed, with some communities facing rotating periods of 48 hours without running water. The situation is serious enough that more than 180,000 people are affected by current rationing, and federal drought officials are warning that the dry conditions could continue into the fall.

Puerto Ricans are Americans.

They are U.S. citizens.

They deserve to be treated like it.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. The people who live there are not somehow less American because they live on an island. Yet when disaster strikes—or when infrastructure fails, debt overwhelms the government, or drought threatens the water supply—we seem to find endless reasons why helping Puerto Rico has to be more complicated than helping Americans on the mainland.

That isn’t good enough.

This Isn’t Just About a Drought

The drought is real. We cannot blame the federal government for a lack of rain.

But the drought is exposing a much bigger problem.

Puerto Rico has spent years dealing with aging infrastructure, enormous financial challenges, and a complicated federal bureaucracy. The island’s water authority, PRASA, has reported that roughly 65% of the water it produces is lost through leaking pipes, overflows, and other problems before it reaches customers.

Think about that.

We are asking people to conserve water during a historic drought while the system itself is losing an enormous amount of the water it produces.

That is not simply a weather problem.

It is an infrastructure problem.

And it is a government problem.

A Financial Trap

After Puerto Rico’s financial crisis, Congress passed PROMESA in 2016 and created a Financial Oversight and Management Board with sweeping authority over Puerto Rico’s finances. The law was designed to restore fiscal responsibility and access to capital markets, but it also fundamentally changed the relationship between Puerto Rico’s elected government and the people overseeing its finances.

There is a legitimate argument for fiscal discipline. Governments have to live within their means. Debts have to be dealt with.

But there is something fundamentally wrong when a government that does not have the financial capacity to rebuild essential infrastructure is simultaneously constrained by a system that makes it extraordinarily difficult to get that infrastructure rebuilt.

It becomes a vicious circle.

You need money to rebuild.

You don’t have the money.

Federal funds are available, but accessing and spending them can involve complicated requirements and reimbursement processes.

Construction costs go up while projects wait.

And the longer you wait, the more expensive everything becomes.

The Government Accountability Office has documented problems with FEMA’s fixed-cost approach to Puerto Rico’s disaster-recovery projects, including the risk that rising construction costs can leave local governments facing significant funding gaps.

That isn’t a recipe for rebuilding.

It’s a recipe for delay.

We Can’t Keep Treating Puerto Rico as Somebody Else’s Problem

This is where I have a problem with the way we talk about Puerto Rico.

Too often, the conversation becomes a political argument about who is to blame.

Democrats blame Republicans.

Republicans blame Democrats.

Puerto Rico’s government blames Washington.

Washington blames Puerto Rico’s government.

The oversight board blames fiscal mismanagement.

Critics blame the oversight board.

And while everyone is arguing, people still don’t have reliable water.

Enough.

At some point, we have to stop looking for someone to blame and start looking for ways to fix the problem.

Because the people living without water don’t care which political party gets the credit.

They need the water turned back on.

What Would We Do If This Were New Hampshire?

I live in Dover, New Hampshire. Anyone who has driven through town sees all the infrastructure work going on. As a city councilor, my email and text messages are filled with legitimate complaints about parking, construction noise, and traffic flow associated with these projects.

They say, “Why is all this work going on at the same time?!”

The answer is simple: we deferred maintenance far too long.

If a city in New Hampshire suddenly lost access to basic water service, we wouldn’t tell the residents to be patient while Washington, the state government, the city government, and a financial oversight board argued over who was responsible.

We would mobilize.

We would find the money.

We would fix the pipes.

We would get people water.

And then we would figure out who screwed up.

Puerto Rico deserves that same sense of urgency.

Not because Puerto Rico is perfect.

It isn’t.

Not because every decision made by the Puerto Rican government has been correct.

It hasn’t.

And not because the federal government bears responsibility for every problem on the island.

It doesn’t.

But because three million-plus American citizens live there.

And basic infrastructure isn’t a luxury.

Clean water isn’t a political favor.

Reliable electricity isn’t a reward for good fiscal management.

They are necessities.

We Have to Break the Cycle

There are real policy questions that need to be addressed.

FEMA needs to make disaster-recovery funding more accessible and predictable, particularly for communities that simply cannot finance enormous projects while waiting years for reimbursement.

Federal officials and the oversight board need to recognize that fiscal responsibility cannot mean allowing essential infrastructure to deteriorate further.

And Congress needs to look honestly at whether the rules governing Puerto Rico actually help the island become financially sustainable—or whether some of those rules make recovery harder.

Most importantly, the federal government needs to treat Puerto Rico’s infrastructure needs with the urgency we would expect for an American community on the mainland.

That means water.

It means electricity.

It means roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals.

It means giving local governments the ability to actually use the resources that have been made available for rebuilding.

I Don’t Want to Arrive in Puerto Rico and Just Talk About the Problem

I am going to Puerto Rico to coach and teach.

I will be in a gym with young athletes who are working to become better gymnasts and aspire to make an Olympic team. I will be working with coaches who care deeply about their athletes and their communities.

That is what I want to focus on.

But I also don’t want to pretend that what happens outside the gym doesn’t matter.

A coach can teach a young person discipline, resilience, and confidence.

But there are limits to what resilience should be asked to overcome.

Nobody should have to be resilient enough to live without reliable water.

Nobody should have to be resilient enough to accept a failing electrical system as normal.

Nobody should have to be resilient enough to watch their community’s future disappear because bureaucracy and politics make rebuilding impossible.

Puerto Rico doesn’t need our pity.

It needs partnership.

It needs investment.

It needs competent government at every level.

And above all, it needs to be treated as what it is:

part of America.

We can argue about Puerto Rico’s ultimate political status. We can debate statehood, independence, or the current territorial relationship.

But we shouldn’t need to settle that argument before agreeing on something much more basic:

American citizens deserve clean water, reliable power, and the opportunity to build a future.

As I head to Puerto Rico, that is what I will be thinking about.

I am going there to work with athletes and coaches.

I hope I can also come home having learned more about the people of Puerto Rico, their resilience, and their determination to build something better.

Because they deserve better.

And frankly, we should be better.