[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 158 (Thursday, October 12, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S15092]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     CUBAN LIBERTY AND DEMOCRATIC SOLIDARITY [LIBERTAD] ACT OF 1995

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreements

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a cloture 
vote occur tonight at 8:30 p.m. and that the mandatory quorum under 
rule XXII be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the 
second cloture vote, if necessary, occur on Tuesday, October 17, 1995, 
at a time to be determined by the two leaders, and that the mandatory 
quorum under rule XXII be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object. I 
would just like to say I had hoped to get a vote on my amendment, which 
is the pending business on the Cuba resolution, and I will do whatever 
I can, wherever I can, to get that amendment an opportunity for a vote, 
but I do not want to stand in the way of this important resolution. So 
I will not object at this time to this unanimous-consent request, but 
will be seeking to get a vote on it in the event that the cloture vote 
fails, or, in the event that the cloture vote succeeds, I will amend 
the next business or near next business of the Senate in order to get 
that vote. I do not object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there any other objection? Without 
objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have listened to some of the debate on 
the Cuba resolution and, in a way, I almost think I am watching the 
U.S. Senate scripted by Monty Python. You would think that we have 
these two huge megacountries at war with each other, trying to see 
which one can get some kind of an advantage over the other. But the 
situation as it is involves the most powerful nation in history and an 
impoverished little island. I do not hold any brief for Mr. Castro and 
his brand of communism, nor do I hold any brief for the mistakes he has 
made in his country that have caused suffering among his own people.
  But when you hear in this debate suggestions that somehow United 
States security is at risk if we do not continue to punish Mr. Castro 
and the people of Cuba, that is ridiculous, Mr. President. It is a bit 
like the argument we heard about a decade ago that if the Soviet Union 
were able to have their supporters in Nicaragua, the next thing you 
know, they would be marching on Galveston, TX. It ignores the reality 
of the situation and ignores the fact that if they were foolish enough 
to do that, they would not get very far. The Texas National Guard is 
stronger than any Central American military force.
  Here we have a situation where some are saying we should not even 
give Fidel Castro a visa to go to the United Nations, as if the United 
States would turn its back on its own treaty and legal obligations in 
that regard. Maybe at some point we should acknowledge the reality. The 
reality is that you have an aging Communist leader, whom time and 
history and economic realities have left behind, who must realize that 
himself, and who will not live forever--as none of us do--but a man who 
poses no threat to the United States ideologically, militarily, 
economically, or in any other way. But you have an awful lot of people 
on that little island who do not have medical needs met, nutritional 
needs met, and so many of their economic needs certainly are not met.
  We have the rest of the world looking at the United States and 
saying, ``What are they afraid of?'' Our neighbor to the north, Canada, 
a country with whom we share the longest unguarded frontier in the 
world, has regular relations with Cuba. I can drive an hour from my 
home in Vermont to the airport in Montreal and get on a plane to Cuba. 
They are not threatened by it. But here, in the most powerful nation on 
Earth, I cannot do that. I would have to have all kinds of special 
exemptions made and State Department authorization, and on and on and 
on. You know, at some point, somebody is going to say that we are 
afraid of our own shadow. I do not think we are. We are too good and 
too powerful a nation for that.
  Let us pay attention to the real foreign policy concerns of our 
country. Let us ask ourselves, should we not be spending far more time 
in reasserting the leadership we have not given NATO over the past 3, 
4, or 5 years? Let us ask whether we should be doing more to support 
the emerging democracies of the world. Let us ask what we are doing to 
expand our markets abroad like the Japanese, Europeans, and others do, 
at a time when we have huge balance-of-payment deficits, which started 
about 8 years ago. Let us not continue this absurd obsession with the 
aging leader of a tiny little island that poses no threat to the United 
States.
  It demeans what we stand for, and it impedes the development of 
closer relations between our two countries. It is by strengthening 
those ties, by enabling Americans to travel freely to Cuba and Cubans 
to come here, that we will eventually see democracy in Cuba, not by 
continuing to isolate Cuba as if the Cold War had never ended and the 
Soviet Union were still trying to put its missiles there. The times 
have changed, and it is time we changed with the times.

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