‘Hamilton’ creator joins John Oliver, raps about Puerto Rico bailout [VIDEO]

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, was mentioned along with other famous Puerto Ricans, including judges from American Idol and the Supreme Court, and athletes. Oliver showed a clip of Miranda speaking about the island’s “crisis,” which he called “a fixable problem.” He was also willing to help through Hamilton tickets.

With how good the show is “we owe Puerto Rico for that man,” Oliver claimed. He also suggested Congress take Miranda up on the offer as “it’s easier for a meerkat to get into Harvard Law School than it is to get into that show.”

Miranda came to the stage to close the segment with a rap appealing directly to Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi. “Paul Ryan, I’ll come sing Hamilton at your house. I’ll do-si-do with Pelosi, I’ll wear my Hamilton blouse. Your citizens are suffering, stop the bleeding, stop the loss, help Puerto Rico 100 miles across,” he sang.

The $70 billion debt “is not payable. This is not politics, this is math,” Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla has warned.

Neither Miranda in his rap nor Oliver during the segment mentioned that the debt crisis has been worsened by the federally mandated minimum wage. Oliver focused on hedge funds and “massive consequences” of legal loopholes, including:

• Tax breaks for businesses moving to Puerto Rico, which were then phased out by 2006
• Triple-tax exempt municipal bonds, where Puerto Rico may not be in the name, with certain bond holders being paid before basic necessities
• Puerto Rico has not been able to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy since 1994
• Exemptions from capital gains tax, which is “pretty good rich people bait”

The bi-partisan H.R. 4900 “could be a real help to Puerto Rico,” but the Center for Individual Freedom has taken out ads against the proposal.

Before Miranda took the stage, Oliver made a plea to treat Puerto Rico not “as a tax haven,” but “as an island of American citizens whose fate is interwoven with ours.”