Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been engaged with the issue of Puerto Rico’s status for much of his career in the U.S. Senate. He has spoken up for practical support for the Island relating to the inequities imposed on the territory by its unequal status. and he has a significantly larger platform than the vast majority of his colleagues as lead Democrat of the Senate Finance Committee with jurisdiction over federal tax law and healthcare funding. He has worked for federal disaster assistance, fairness in federal healthcare spending, and equal treatment in food assistance benefits.
He has recently been engaged in examination of the territory’s special tax loopholes. This has included corporate perks as well as the sweetheart deals offered to wealthy newcomers moving to Puerto Rico.
Wyden supports resolution of Puerto Rico’s status
Wyden has also worked to resolve the political status of the U.S. territory. He supported a federally-funded status plebiscite with voter education proposed by President Obama. Speaking at the introduction of the Puerto Rico Status Act, Wyden said, “For 106 years, the people of Puerto Rico have been citizens of the United States, yet they still live in political limbo. It’s long past time that those millions of U.S. citizens living and working in Puerto Rico have the opportunity to decide their future status.”
Perhaps most importantly, Senator Wyden is one of the legislators who fully understands the status issue. As chair of the 2013 Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing on Puerto Rico’s status, he emphasized that Puerto Rico’s choices for political status must be statehood and independence, not the current territorial status which voters have already rejected, and not a discredited “enhanced commonwealth” idea.
Last week, Senator Wyden publicly discredited the “commonwealth” concept at a U.S. Senate hearing, calling it a mix of “unconstitutional fantasies.” He further explained that “[t]hey seem to me to be a distraction, and the status question needs to stay focused on whether Puerto Rico should become a state or an independent nation.”
A Page from History: Free Beer and BBQ for Puerto Rico
The options
Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon responded favorably to Senator Wyden’s comments in that hearing and discredited a recent status proposal introduced by Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Pablo Jose Hernandez. “In a plebiscite proposed by the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico,” she explained, “saying that you can have a territory deciding what federal laws apply and what do not, and that they can choose which countries they want to have a treaty with or not – that has been banned by the Supreme Court of this land and by DOJ, in both Republican and Democratic administrations. And the people of Puerto Rico have rejected that, not once, not twice, but four times in a row, and in the last one in 2024, more than 60 percent voted against the current territorial status. So that is denying the consensus on the island, where more than 60 percent want statehood. So, Senator, I believe that the only options the people of Puerto Rico have are independence, remaining as a territory, or statehood, which is the preferred option of the people of the island.”
Wyden is not thinking only of Puerto Rico
Like many other Americans, Wyden is thinking about the nation as a whole when he takes up the issue of Puerto Rico’s political status. “Puerto Rico must either exercise full self-government as a sovereign nation, or achieve equality among the States of the Union. The current relationship undermines the United States’ moral standing in the world,” he said roughly thirteen years ago in his opening statement for the 2013 hearing. “For a nation founded on the principles of democracy and the consent of the governed, how much longer can America allow a condition to persist in which nearly four million U.S. citizens do not have a vote in the government that makes the national laws which affect their daily lives? That is the question.”
Senator Wyden’s statement is as relevant today as it was in 2013, as the U.S. prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Photo by Anthony Dimaano
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