H.R. 727, the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Process Act, Gains Sponsors

Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi announced today that 10 additional Members of Congress have joined as cosponsors of H.R. 727, the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Process Act, a bipartisan bill that would result in Puerto Rico becoming a state on January 1, 2021 once a majority of the electorate in Puerto Rico votes in favor of admission in a federally-sponsored vote.

The bill now has 61 cosponsors—48 Democrats and 13 Republicans. The number of Republican cosponsors for H.R. 727 has surpassed the number of Republican cosponsors for H.R. 2000, Pierluisi’s political status bill in the last Congress, which ultimately obtained 131 total cosponsors.

In a November 2012 referendum in Puerto Rico, sponsored by the local government, voters soundly rejected Puerto Rico’s current territory status and expressed a clear preference for statehood.

H.R. 727 would authorize a vote to be held in Puerto Rico within one year of the bill’s enactment—that is, no later than the end of 2017. The ballot would consist of a single question: “Shall Puerto Rico be admitted as a State of the United States?” In 2014, at Pierluisi’s initiative, and over the objections of the Governor of Puerto Rico and his allies, Congress enacted a $2.5 million appropriation to enable Puerto Rico to conduct the first-federally sponsored vote in its history, so long as certain conditions are met. Under H.R. 727, the admission vote authorized by the bill may be funded with the $2.5 million that Congress approved. This is appropriate because a straightforward vote on admission clearly satisfies the conditions that the federal government established in the appropriations law.

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