Sen­a­tors Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren last week unveiled a bill propos­ing the cre­ation of a $146 bil­lion ​“Mar­shall Plan” to recov­er and repair the storm-rav­aged economies in Puer­to Rico and the U.S. Vir­gin Islands — by reliev­ing the ter­ri­to­ries’ over­whelm­ing debt and invest­ing heav­i­ly in low-car­bon, storm-resilient eco­nom­ic development.

Building in more democratic control of the Puerto Rican economy could also be a way to head off corporate interests that tend to swoop in post-disaster.

As Repub­li­cans all but aban­don the guise of deficit hawk­ish­ness with their tril­lion-dol­lar-plus tax plan, such ambi­tious spend­ing pro­pos­als could be a mod­el not just for dis­as­ter response, but for Demo­c­ra­t­ic pol­i­cy­mak­ing going for­ward. There are few paths to deal­ing ade­quate­ly with cli­mate change that won’t involve large-scale pub­lic invest­ment. In that, Sanders and Warren’s ​“Mar­shall Plan” could mod­el a way that U.S. pol­i­cy can help pick up the pieces after cli­mate-fueled storms — and help stop Hur­ri­cane Maria-style heavy weath­er from becom­ing more likely.

“Many are strug­gling to get clean drink­ing water, and more than 100,000 peo­ple have left Puer­to Rico alone,” Sanders said in a press con­fer­ence with sev­er­al of the bill’s co-spon­sors last Tues­day morn­ing. ​“This is not accept­able, and we are here today to tell the peo­ple of Puer­to Rico and tell the peo­ple of the Vir­gin Islands that they are not for­got­ten, they are not alone, and that we intend to do every­thing pos­si­ble to rebuild those beau­ti­ful islands.”

More than two months on from Hur­ri­cane Maria, up to 60 per­cent of res­i­dents in the U.S. Vir­gin Islands remain with­out elec­tric­i­ty and sev­er­al basic ser­vices, accord­ing to a late Novem­ber report from the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. Large swathes of Puer­to Rico remain with­out pow­er as well.

The plans laid out in the bill are wide-rang­ing. It stip­u­lates that $51 bil­lion would be devot­ed to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment on the island, and $27 bil­lion would go toward rebuild­ing downed, dam­aged and neglect­ed infra­struc­ture — includ­ing the island’s long-belea­guered elec­tric util­i­ty. An addi­tion­al $62 bil­lion would go to repay­ing Puer­to Rico’s at least $74 bil­lion in munic­i­pal debt. Spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions cov­er every­thing from grants for local agri­cul­ture to par­i­ty for Med­ic­aid and Medicare pay­ments to addi­tion­al funds for the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs to financ­ing for a rapid scale-up of the island’s renew­able ener­gy capac­i­ty. The plan also hands con­trol of restora­tion pro­grams over to Puer­to Ricans, stat­ing that ​“the peo­ple of Puer­to Rico and their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives should deter­mine the long-term future of the island.”

Build­ing in more demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of the Puer­to Rican econ­o­my could also be a way to head off cor­po­rate inter­ests that tend to swoop in post-dis­as­ter. ​“We’ve all read Nao­mi Klein’s The Shock Doc­trine,” said Sanders’ cli­mate and ener­gy advi­sor Katie Thomas, who worked exten­sive­ly on the bill. “[Sanders] said we need to do every­thing we can to pre­vent the Shock Doc­trine-iza­tion of this sit­u­a­tion. He want­ed infor­ma­tion on what had hap­pened after Kat­ri­na, when so much of the pub­lic infra­struc­ture was either pri­va­tized or elim­i­nat­ed. We want­ed to be clear that we don’t want any­thing like that to hap­pen in the future in Puer­to Rico or the Vir­gin Islands.”

Accord­ing to Thomas, the bill emerged in part from the Senator’s Octo­ber trip to the island and a series of ​“real­ly pro­duc­tive round­table con­ver­sa­tions with dozens of labor lead­ers, may­ors and lead­ers want­i­ng to rebuild Puer­to Rico back stronger than it was before.” While the bill ini­tial­ly came about as a way to deal with the island’s elec­tric­i­ty grid — vir­tu­al­ly lev­eled dur­ing Maria and in dire dis­re­pair before that — that vis­it and sub­se­quent talks with peo­ple on the island pushed them to con­sid­er a broad­er strat­e­gy, Thomas told In These Times.

Even before Maria hit, the U.S.-appointed fis­cal con­trol board in Puer­to Rico — the body now over­see­ing the island’s finances — had its eye on pri­va­tiz­ing the Puer­to Rico Elec­tric Pow­er Author­i­ty (PREPA), the island’s monop­oly elec­tric util­i­ty. ​“The jun­ta,” as the con­trol board is known col­lo­qui­al­ly on the island, is charged with restruc­tur­ing Puer­to Rico’s debt. The bill that cre­at­ed the jun­ta, PROME­SA, was intend­ed to act as a medi­a­tor between cred­i­tors and the Puer­to Rican gov­ern­ment. While it’s kept the vul­ture funds that hold Puer­to Rico’s debt at bay from demand­ing total repay­ment, that pro­tec­tion has come at the expense of deep cuts to the island’s pub­lic ser­vices and a push to sell pub­lic enti­ties off to pri­vate bid­ders. PREPA was at the top of the con­trol board’s pri­va­ti­za­tion wish list before Maria. After the storm hit, the board took sev­er­al more steps in that direction.

Sanders’ bill would bar the pri­va­ti­za­tion of any pub­lic enti­ty receiv­ing funds from the U.S. gov­ern­ment, effec­tive­ly mak­ing it impos­si­ble to pri­va­tize PREPA for the fore­see­able future.

Thomas also explained that one of the bill’s main pri­or­i­ties is not hav­ing U.S. offi­cials decide what recov­ery looks like in either of the ter­ri­to­ries aid­ed by the bill or pub­lic enti­ties like PREPA. ​“It’s real­ly impor­tant to us that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is not mak­ing deci­sions for the peo­ple of Puer­to Rico,” she said by phone. ​“We didn’t think it was appro­pri­ate for us to say what the future of PREPA should be, because we don’t think that’s an appro­pri­ate role for the fed­er­al government.”

Instead, the bill would entrust the Puer­to Rico Ener­gy Com­mis­sion — the reg­u­la­to­ry body that over­sees PREPA, cre­at­ed in 2014 — with over­see­ing plans for pow­er restora­tion, with its coun­ter­part per­form­ing the same func­tion in the U.S. Vir­gin Islands. Rather than restor­ing PREPA to its sta­tus pre-storm, the bill would fur­ther pri­or­i­tize both get­ting pow­er online as quick­ly as pos­si­ble and tran­si­tion­ing rapid­ly over to renew­able fuels, which are both less expen­sive and more storm resilient for the import-depen­dent island. While an out­age at a fos­sil fueled cen­tral sta­tion gen­er­a­tor can leave thou­sands of peo­ple with­out elec­tric­i­ty, pan­els can often remain online and pro­vide pow­er amidst grid failures.

For David Ortiz, the Lati­no cli­mate action net­work direc­tor for El Puente, expand­ing renew­able ener­gy goes hand-in-hand with expand­ing eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties in Puer­to Rico, where he lives. Ortiz, who con­sult­ed with Sanders’s office on the bill in the lead-up to its release, told In These Times, ​“Eco­nom­i­cal­ly we’ve real­ly been hit, almost destroyed.

“What we need to do is be able to think of mul­ti­ple ways of gen­er­at­ing renew­able ener­gy so that folks have access to it,” Ortiz con­tin­ued, ​“be it through small com­mu­ni­ty grids or through rooftop solar. But we also need to pre­pare our work­ers for that shift, and con­tin­ue to have employ­ment and sup­port for them. What we don’t want is for oth­er com­pa­nies from out­side to come into the island, because we’ll con­tin­ue to have more mon­ey go out­side of the island.”

He described going recent­ly to a usu­al­ly-busy part of Old San Juan with his wife and fam­i­ly, and find­ing the nor­mal­ly packed park­ing lot they use filled with just a few cars, and sev­er­al stores in the area’s main busi­ness dis­trict shut­tered. ​“You can’t help but to wor­ry about the future of Puer­to Rico’s econ­o­my,” he told me. Ortiz sees the bill as a ​“real­ly holis­tic approach to deal­ing with the crisis.”

There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly rad­i­cal about the idea of spend­ing pub­lic funds on the kinds of things that get economies back on their feet, from job cre­ation to mas­sive infra­struc­ture invest­ment. Repub­li­cans and even Democ­rats tend to swat down ambi­tious spend­ing pro­pos­als as waste­ful. The faint sil­ver lin­ing of the GOP’s suc­cess with the tax bill is that they can’t claim with any author­i­ty to care much at all about the size of a fed­er­al deficit they just pledged to increase by as much as $2 tril­lion over the next 10 years.

Though sev­er­al details of the ini­tia­tive would be left up to offi­cials in Puer­to Rico, the new Mar­shall Plan’s struc­ture lays out an attrac­tive mod­el for ambi­tious cli­mate pol­i­cy on the main­land — that is, demo­c­ra­t­ic cli­mate action and dis­as­ter response that talks more about what it will do for work­ers and the econ­o­my than for the plan­et. If we have the mon­ey for tax cuts for cor­po­ra­tions and the ultra-wealthy, then we have the mon­ey to make the kinds of pro-work­er eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tions the cli­mate cri­sis demands. With Sanders and Warren’s bill, Puer­to Rico and the U.S. Vir­gin Islands could show the way for­ward to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that isn’t afraid to spend mon­ey on the things we need.