Virginia Lieutenant Governor ralph northam. Democratic candidate for governor. Well be watching next week to see how you do. Thank you for joining us, sir. Thanks so much, katy. That wraps things up for me this hour. Ali velshi, my friend it is friday. Are you done . The president is overseas. Right. I think were going to have a quiet weekend. I dont know. Just say it. Might have a quiet weekend. Theres always one. I have property to sell you in florida. Katy have a great afternoon and i hope you do have a quiet weekend. I hope we all do. Im ali val shi, as katy alluded to, President Trump will arrive in hawaii, the one stop before he kicks off his highstakes visit to asia. The longer overseas trip of any president since 1991, but the president is traveling with some hefty political baggage as the russia investigation looms. Mr. President , do you remember George Papadopolos during that march meeting i dont remember much about that meeting. It was a very unimportant meeting that took p
representatives from the u.s. virgin islands are pleading with congress for more help to recover from hurricane maria. about 70% of the territory s 107,000 residents are still without power more than a month after the storm made landfall. the islands are also desperate for tourists who normally keep its economy afloat. democratic representative stacey plaska said attracting tourists this year will be nearly impossible with resorts closed, jobs are scarce, plus gasoline generators and food are more expensive than they are on the mainland of the united states. virgin islands congressman stacey plaska joins me. you and i talked about this before. if you look at the statistics of the u.s. virgin islands, it s some very high percentage dependent on tourism. it s more than the percentage you d think because there are
entire businesses that you wouldn t think are connected with the tourist industry, service industries and things like that, that only exist because there s a tourist industry. so it s probably upward of 90s% of the island depends on robust tourism. well, at this point, we have about 50% of our gdp is based on tourism which is a significant number for an island to base its economy on. the disposal income of other people. because of the hurricanes and the loss of many of our resorts, that, of course, is going to be compromised. airlift has not been the same as well as the cruise ships even coming into port. so we re really going to have to struggle in this next year and a half. many of the resorts have said it s going to take about two years to rebuild. and so this is an opportunity for us to re-create ourselves and to rethink what we re going to really need the support of congress to do that. what s the chicken and what s the egg here because you need the tourism to come back but th
came back home in the early 2000s was because of the tax laws that were there that allowed virgin islanders to come back home and to some of the financial services and knowledge-based businesses. so i m asking congress to correct what they did previously so that we can boost those industries, haas well as begin working on tourism as well. do you feel you got support in congress for this? well, listen, i think that members are listening right now. i talked with them about the stafford act, which is where a lot of the relief money is coming out of. that right now the bill says and the law says that you rebuild as was. and that s just going to put us back in a position that the next hurricane where we re going to have those infrastructure decimated again. a lot of republican members realize that s not fiscally responsible and that the stafford act needs to be amended to build as should be, which will make us much more resilient, harden some of our utilities as well so we can