Puerto Ricans as yet recouping from a staggering storm that slaughtered thousands and dislodged considerably more may see their region’s catastrophe reserves moved to what President Donald Trump claims is a crisis at the U.S-Mexico outskirt.
Trump is supposedly considering an arrangement to announce a national crisis and after that siphon cash from assets utilized for fiasco alleviation in Puerto Rico, Texas, California, Florida and different states influenced by cataclysmic events so as to pay for his fringe divider.
Puerto Rico is as yet enduring the fallout of a sea tempest a year ago, and authorities there were terrified by the reports.
“Taking $ from hazardous situations to pay for a divider is the boastful reaction of a man who gets his direction or cuts everybody down,” Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz (D) of San Juan, Puerto Rico, tweeted Thursday.
Taking $ from disaster areas to pay for a wall is the egotistical response of a man who gets his way or brings everyone down. @CNNPolitics
— Carmen Yulín Cruz (@CarmenYulinCruz) January 11, 2019
Trump has asked Congress to approve $5 billion of taxpayer money for his wall, and partially shut down the government when he was denied the funding.
He’s now considering alternate methods of payment. An official who spoke to CNN said the White House has asked the Pentagon to provide it with a list of funds that were meant to go to relief projects but have not yet been spent, which totals an estimated $13 billion.
The shutdown, which has entered its 21st day, has left an expected 800,000 government specialists furloughed or working without pay. Trump said a week ago he can “relate” to the unpaid specialists, however, that “they’ll make changes.”
On Thursday, Trump said he had “indisputably the right” to pronounce a national crisis to fabricate his divider and said that Mexico will “by implication” pay for it.
“I have indisputably the privilege to pronounce a national crisis, the legal advisors have so exhorted me,” Trump said outside the White House. “I’m not set up to do that yet, but rather in the event that I need to, I will. I have no uncertainty about it. I will.”
“In any case, the simple course for me is called a national crisis and do it,” he included.
Rep. Jenniffer Gonzalez (R-Puerto Rico) said late Thursday that Trump is playing “political football.”
“While the President has wide military experts, as the Commander in Chief, with regards to pronouncing a national crisis, I can’t and won’t bolster reallocating financing we endorsed in a bipartisan exertion in Congress for the recuperation and reproduction of Puerto Rico,” Gonzalez said.
“We haven’t gotten the subsidizing after over a year and utilizing this as a political football isn’t what the American residents in Puerto Rico merit,” she proceeded.
My initial statement to news report 👇 pic.twitter.com/d79xGgLX2A
— Jenniffer González (@RepJenniffer) January 10, 2019
Trump has been criticized for his response to the disaster in Puerto Rico.
In November, he reportedly told Congressional leaders he didn’t want any more money going to Puerto Rico for their disaster relief because, he believed without evidence, that the Puerto Rican government was mishandling the money and instead using it to pay off debt.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story referred to Puerto Rico as a state. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. A previous version also referred to Rep. Gonzalez as a Democrat. She is a Republican.
