Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA was recently featured in BuzzFeed News speaking on Puerto Rico. Read excerpt below and follow link to full article.

It Wasn't Just a Hurricane that Destroyed Puerto Rico

By: Michael Sean Winters

"'Before the hurricanes, almost 60% of kids in Puerto Rico lived in poverty and the island was already reeling from hurricane-like blows in the form of austerity,' said Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA, a faith-based nonprofit that focuses on debt issues in the developing world. 'Austerity measures cut health care, education, and social services on the island. Austerity bleeds hope and breeds despair among a people that have suffered so much.'

LeCompte has been working with religious, business, and labor leaders, both on the island and in Washington, for more than two years, helping them to craft solutions to the fiscal crisis that would not further harm the poor. He played a key role in fashioning PROMESA, the bill passed by Congress to address Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, and he said critics of the legislation fail to grasp what it achieved at a time when there were no better options.

The law has two main achievements, he said. 'First, it prevented predatory vulture funds from buying the island's debt cheap to profit off the crisis and make a bad situation even worse. Second, the legislation created a bankruptcy process that can cut all of Puerto Rico's debt, a process that can take into account the impacts of the hurricane.'"

Read more here.