Washington
\nUS President Donald Trump will ask Congress for a bumper USD 29 billion package of emergency relief for Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, officials told AFP on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Trump will request a package that includes USD 12.77 in disaster relief and a USD 16 billion bailout to keep a critical flood insurance program running.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate indication when the request would come, but top Republicans have suggested a package will be approved by the middle of this month.<\/p>\n
The news comes after Trump visited the US island yesterday.<\/p>\n
He shook hands with storm survivors, lobbed rolls of paper towels into a crowd and tried to slap down critics who judged his administration\u2019s response to the disaster too slow.<\/p>\n
But he also raised eyebrows by suggesting residents should be \u201cproud\u201d that Maria did not kill as many people as \u201ca real catastrophe like Katrina\u201d\u2014which ravaged New Orleans in 2005.<\/p>\n
Trump also sent financial markets fluttering when he suggested Puerto Rico\u2019s USD 70 billion-plus debt would have to be wiped out.<\/p>\n
Markets reacted poorly to the comments\u2014which were quickly walked back by White House officials.<\/p>\n
Investors holding Puerto Rico\u2019s debt have been in a long tussle to minimise their losses.<\/p>\n
After Trump\u2019s remarks, bonds due to mature in 2035 traded at 32.25 cents on the dollar, down from 44 cents yesterday.<\/p>\n
Even before the monster storm, which made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, the territory had declared a form of bankruptcy and said its economy was in a \u201cdeath spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n
After falling into recession a decade ago, Puerto Rico debt-financed its budget. US lawmakers last year put the island\u2019s finances under federal administration, suspending lawsuits from creditors, but legal battles have continued.<\/p>\n
The package is significantly larger than the USD 15 billion hurricane relief package for Texas after Hurricane Harvey, but is likely to be only a fraction of what the island needs.<\/p>\n
The debt relief portion is expected to come with no conditions attached, but may include recommendations to reform a flood insurance program that was due to run out of cash by the end of the month.<\/p>\n
The disaster relief portion of the funding is expected to keep Puerto Rico going until the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington US President Donald Trump will ask Congress for a bumper USD 29 billion package of emergency relief for Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, officials told AFP on Wednesday. Trump will request a package that includes USD 12.77 in disaster relief and a USD 16 billion bailout to keep a critical flood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6833,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831\/revisions\/6833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}