Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi’s Puerto Rico statehood bill is well ahead of a pack of more than 2,600 bills open to cosponsoring by everyday citizens via a new online initiative launched by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
Pierluisi’s Puerto Rico Status Resolution Act has garnered 1,135 citizen cosponsors as of Wednesday. That puts it above all other bills pending in the U.S. House of Representatives. The next closest measures are the Fair Tax Act (896 citizen cosponsors) and the Border Security Results Act (547).
Cantor, a Virginia Republican, announced the rollout of the Citizen Cosponsor Project last month. The new initiative includes a website http://citizens-majorityleader.house.gov/ and allows citizens to comment on pending legislation in the House via their Facebook profiles. From there, users are able to follow legislation they are interested in and receive updates on the status of the bill as it moves through Congress.
Cantor called Citizen Cosponsor Project “a dynamic communications platform that creates a more open, visible and participatory legislative process.”
The Puerto Rico bill’s strong showing in the online popularity contest is due, at least in part, to efforts by Pierluisi and his statehood New Progressive Party, to drum up support for the measure via social media and email blasts.
Meanwhile, offline and on Capitol Hill, Pierluisi’s bill to put Puerto Rico on the path to statehood continues to build bipartisan support in the House, where 67 lawmakers have signed on to the bill as co-sponsors. That’s up from the 30 who had signed on before the resident commissioner presented the measure on May 15.
The Puerto Rico Status Resolution Act hinges on a proposed federally sanctioned “yes” or “no” vote on statehood in Puerto Rico.
Pierluisi is a national Democrat and Puerto Rico’s sole representative in Congress.
The measure proposed in the House of Representatives would ask Puerto Rican voters, “Do you want Puerto Rico to be admitted as a state of the United States?” A majority vote for statehood would trigger a 180 deadline for the president to certify the results of the plebiscite and lodge legislation in Congress to admit Puerto Rico as a state the union “on an equal footing” with other states.
Despite the support online and on Capitol Hill, action on Pierluisi’ bill is not guaranteed. Unlike the White House, which pledges to issue an official response to all petitions on its “We the People” website that garner 100,000 signatures within a month, there’s no mark in the Citizen Cosponsor Project that triggers action by the House.
The House Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over Puerto Rico, has not scheduled a hearing on Pierluisi’s bill. The Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, which covers Puerto Rico in the upper chamber, will hold a general hearing on statehood, likely this summer, but has yet to pencil in a date.
Click here to read the Puerto Rico Status Resolution Act: http://www.cb.pr/pdfs/statehood_bill.pdf
Read the whole story
· ·
SAN JUAN, June 12 | Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:15pm EDT
SAN JUAN, June 12 (Reuters) - Puerto Rico policymakers have agreed to hike taxes by $1.5 billion as part of a budget which is closely watched by U.S. credit-ratings agencies weighing downgrades of the Caribbean island's massive debts to junk-bond status.
#PR statehood bill leads #US House leader’s citizen cosponsor project. Read:http://ow.ly/lY5CO #caribbeanbusiness
No comments:
Post a Comment