State appropriations solve.

B. Most-Favored State Appropriations The Territories and their advocates should seek temporary most-favored state (MFS) status in appropriations related to Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This temporary MFS in VA and FEMA appropriations, lasting for a renewable period of five years, will help alleviate some of the harms that come from being politically powerless in Washington in the critical areas of veteran care and disaster relief. Funds for veteran care and disaster relief are particularly critical to the Territories. In terms of VA facilities, veterans residing in the Territories do not have the same kind of support as their peers on the mainland despite their high military participation rates and veteran populations. For instance, Guam was ranked last in VA per capita spending in 2012; it does not even have a meaningful in-patient veteran care facility despite having “one of the highest concentrations of military veterans among U.S. states and territories.” Similarly, American Samoa has the highest per capita military enlistment of any state or territory, but its treatment facilities for veterans do not reflect its people’s sacrifices. Veterans from American Samoa and Guam frequently have to travel thousands of miles to seek medical attention in Hawaii or the American mainland. Furthermore, without any meaningful political power in Washington to advocate for disaster relief assistance, the priorities of the Territories are often left to the whims of elected officials in Washington who care more about their voting constituents than the distant residents of the Territories. The geographic locations of the Territories make them particularly vulnerable to catastrophic hurricanes and typhoons, as evidenced by the destructive storms that ravaged Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and the CNMI in 2017 and 2018. In the aftermath of the two apocalyptic storms in 2017 that devastated Puerto Rico, President Trump openly suggested withdrawing federal disaster relief funds while the island was just beginning its recovery, and Congress took over a year to provide additional disaster relief aid. A year later in 2018, while the island continued to struggle with its recovery, President Trump openly denied the rising death toll connected with Hurricane Maria that was approaching 3,000 casualties. In 2019, President Trump again openly disparaged the local leaders of Puerto Rico and suggested withholding further disaster relief funding. Such denials and suggestions about disaster relief appropriations were not made by the Trump administration or previous administrations for devastating storms that struck Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas. The concept of MFS status is borrowed from the international trade law’s concept of the most-favored nation status. Under the seminal legal framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade of 1947 (GATT), the most-favored nation treatment principle means that “any advantage, favour, privilege or immunity granted by any contracting party . . . shall be accorded immediately and unconditionally to the like product originating in or destined for the territories of all other contracting parties.” In practice, a nation-state that is conferred MFS status will generally receive trading terms co-equal to the nation-state receiving the most preferential treatment from the granting state, subject to certain limitations. As a member of GATT and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United States has used the most-favored nation designation to normalize trade relationships with other nation-states. For example, the United States granted permanent most-favored nation status to China when it became a member of the WTO in 2001. As a result, the United States gave China some of the most preferential trading terms relative to other countries and permitted it to permanently bypass the previously contentious annual debates on its designation in Congress. The Territories should seek to receive renewable temporary most-favored state status in VA and FEMA appropriations on a pro-rata basis from the federal government. This means that the Territories would receive the same appropriations as the States receiving the highest appropriations of VA and FEMA funding for a period of five years, consistent with the Congressional Budget Act’s mandated timeline for federal budget resolutions. As a simple illustration, if California were to receive $5,000 per resident on VA and FEMA appropriations annually, and it represented the highest per capita appropriation level, then each of the Territories would receive that level of appropriation for its people. A narrow focus in these two critical areas of VA and FEMA appropriations may make the proposal more politically palatable. A blanket, across-the-board MFS status for all federal appropriations is likely a political nonstarter in Congress, and many appropriations to the States are inapplicable or unsuitable for the Territories. MFS status for the Territories would alleviate some of the harms that come from being politically powerless in the national government and unable to fully advocate for the veterans and Americans living in the Territories. Representatives and senators from each of the States frequently advocate for favorable provisions and appropriations for their constituents in a way that non-voting representatives from the Territories simply cannot do for their people. Elected officials from the Territories, due to their lack of political power in Washington, are often left to publicly plea for assistance through the media and hope that their pleas do not fall on deaf ears. MFS status for the Territories would help remedy this situation by allowing federal appropriations to better reflect the reality that the cost-of-living in the Territories is by many measures higher than in the mainland because of geography. Current appropriations for veteran care and disaster relief through the VA and FEMA, respectively, do not have cost-of-living adjustments despite the fact that a dollar in the continental United States frequently has more purchasing power than in the Territories. Put simply, disaster relief efforts are more expensive when goods have to travel thousands of miles across oceans. Likewise, veterans seeking care for complex procedures and treatments have higher travel costs relative to veterans living on the mainland because they must fly thousands of miles to the American mainland, while veterans on the mainland can frequently drive to an appropriately equipped hospital. In sum, a renewable five-year MFS status for the Territories in federal VA and FEMA appropriations represents a sensible and workable policy that can bring about some immediate relief to the people of the Territories. Moreover, the renewable feature of the proposal will hopefully create a natural, periodic opportunity for the plight of the Territories to receive some meaningful attention in Congress during budget deliberations.