Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that the Trump administration would not focus on Puerto Rico’s debt crisis until after the island had recovered from Hurricane Maria.
“What we’re focusing on right now, the primary focus of the federal effort, which is to make the island safe,” Mr. Mulvaney said on CNN. “We are not going to deal right now with the fundamental difficulties.”
“Puerto Rico is going to have to figure out a way to solve that debt problem going forward,” he added.
Mr. Mulvaney was responding to President Trump’s comments on Tuesday that the federal government would forgive Puerto Rico’s mounting debt estimated at over $70 billion.
“We will have to wipe that out,” Mr. Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired Tuesday. “The debt was massive on the island.”
Mr. Mulvaney also pushed back on claims that the Trump administration didn’t act fast enough to help people in Puerto Rico, and defended the president’s tweets that the media wasn’t covering the situation accurately.
Puerto Rico suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Maria last month and left much of the island without power or essential supplies.
“We had a meeting, I think it was Friday of last week here at the White House,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “The meeting began and ended with this question, is there anything we could be doing that we’re not currently doing?”
He said that those involved in the meeting included the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as other administration officials.
Mr. Mulvaney said the reason aid had been slower than it had been to Florida or Texas was the island’s distance and the extent of the damage. He said the federal government will continue to proceed as they have been and that the meetings on the island Tuesday were “productive.”
• Sally Persons can be reached at spersons@washingtontimes.com.
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