[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15203-S15205]
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.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I support the cloture motion which will 
be voted on this afternoon at 5 o'clock, because I believe that it is 
very important that this legislation be considered by the Senate and 
acted upon by the Senate.
  While I ordinarily support an active international role for the 
United States and active involvement with other nations around the 
world, I believe that the current situation in Cuba presents a 
situation where we ought not to do anything to strengthen the hand of 
Fidel Castro. I believe that the legislation will increase the pressure 
on the Castro regime and lay the groundwork for future U.S. support for 
a democratic transition.
  The State Department's 1994 human rights report to Congress paints a 
grotesque picture of repression by the Castro regime. It shows 
Government-organized mob attacks on dissidents. It shows nationwide 
political surveillance. It shows extrajudicial killings of Cubans 
attempting to flee; for example, the sinking of boats loaded with 
refugees by Government forces last year. It shows, by every significant 
human rights standard, the Castro regime has an appalling record on 
freedom of speech, of assembly, and freedom from arbitrary arrest.
  Castro has been largely immune to the democratic changes that have 
swept the hemisphere during the past 10 years and what that regime has 
in common with totalitarian states such as the ones created by Erich 
Honecker in East Germany and Kim Il-song in North Korea.
  Mr. President, the legislation will be a significant step forward in 
isolating Fidel Castro and in hastening the day when democracy can 
return to Cuba so that that community, that nation, may be liberated 
from Castro's totalitarian regime and may take its place in the family 
of nations as a productive nation and a productive society.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, at the outset, I want to make it 
clear that I strongly endorse the central objective of H.R. 927, 
namely, the peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba. The Cuban people 
have too long been deprived the freedoms of speech, association, and 
self-expression. Like almost every American, I want to see that the 
repression of the Cuban people by the Cuban Government is ended. And, 
like almost every American, I want to see that long overdue economic 
reforms in Cuba are implemented, so that ordinary Cuban people can 
improve their standard of living.
  These are not, however, the questions before the Senate. What is 
before the Senate is H.R. 927, and what we have to decide is whether 
the provisions of this bill will help move Cuba toward freedom, 
democracy, and greater economic 

[[Page S 15204]]
opportunity, or not. I would like to say that I believe the bill will 
work, but the simple fact is that it will not.
  This legislation pursues a laudable objective the wrong way. It seeks 
to increase the pressure and isolation of Cuba by further tightening 
the trade embargo and encouraging United States allies and trading 
partners to terminate their trade relations with Cuba through punitive 
and retributive measures. That policy cannot and will not work.
  The United States approach to Cuba has been virtually unchanged since 
the early 1960's. Since then, the United States has maintained a 
comprehensive trade embargo to isolate the Castro regime politically, 
to weaken it economically and, thereby, to pressure the Cuban 
Government into making the desired reforms. H.R. 927 is simply the 
latest in a series of legislative proposals that purport to provide the 
final push that will force the Cuban Government over the brink.
  This new final push, though, is perhaps even less likely than the 
series of past final pushes to succeed, because it is not based on the 
economic, political, and diplomatic facts. Despite close to 35 years of 
U.S. trade embargo, the Castro regime remains in place.
  Even more importantly, the embargo represents a policy orientation 
that the rest of the world seems to be abandoning. Our most loyal 
allies and other countries do not support the United States position on 
Cuba. In fact, the United States is the only country in the Western 
Hemisphere with a trade embargo of Cuba and one of only five countries 
that does not have formal ties with Cuba.
  Moreover, it was only last year, October 1994, that the world 
community soundly rejected a proposal that was similar to H.R. 927--one 
that would broaden the embargo against Cuba--by a vote of 101 to 2. 
Apparently, our neighbors in the hemisphere and allies around the world 
believe that dialog and engagement, not confrontation, isolation, and 
threats, are the best ways to encourage change in Cuba.
  The fact is that, without support of our allies and other countries, 
unilateral United States action against Cuba is unlikely to succeed and 
could have the unintended effect of unnecessarily increasing friction 
between the United States and its allies and trading partners.
  For economic sanctions to work, strong international cooperation is 
required. When we have that cooperation, as in the case of South 
Africa, sanctions can work and can make sense as a policy alternative. 
The success of the sanctions directed at South Africa was due, almost 
exclusively, to our ability to convince our allies and other countries, 
through moral suasion, not punitive or retributive legislation, to 
support economic sanctions to change the domestic policies and behavior 
of South Africa.
  On the other hand, when the United States acts unilaterally and tries 
to bludgeon the rest of the world into line with our policy, the result 
is often failure. It is worth keeping in mind what happened when the 
United States acted unilaterally to try to prevent a natural gas 
pipeline in the former Soviet Union from being completed. The policy 
was a failure; the pipeline was built. However, major U.S. exporters 
were hurt. Caterpillar, in my own State of Illinois, lost a major sale 
to its largest international competitor, Komatsu, weakening 
Caterpillar, and strengthening Komatsu, in international markets for a 
long time.
  Moreover, the United States policy created a major controversy 
with our closest NATO ally, Great Britain, and with France. They saw 
the U.S. policy as an infringement on their sovereignty.

  This legislation raises important governmental, as well as practical 
and diplomatic, issues. Many experts see it as an encroachment on the 
President's authority under the Constitution to conduct the foreign 
affairs of the United States. For example, the President would be 
prohibited from providing foreign aid or international development aid 
credits to Russia and the other Newly Independent States if they 
continue to trade with or give money to Cuba. As the only remaining 
world superpower, we have widespread global interests, interests which 
do not all turn on the status of a particular country's trade relations 
with Cuba.
  Mr. President, H.R. 927 is therefore unlikely to advance United 
States interests in Cuba. Instead, what it is more likely to do is to 
damage other U.S. interests. Increased political and economic pressure 
on Cuba is more likely to enable Castro to play his nationalistic card 
and use the United States as a scapegoat to explain away Cuba's 
economic problems than to weaken his grip on Cuba.
  And even though it is unlikely to achieve the objectives for Cuba we 
all share, title III of this legislation will create a nightmare for 
the United States judicial system, potentially costing United States 
taxpayers billions of dollars to provide access to United States courts 
for property claim lawsuits filed by or on behalf of individuals who 
were not legally entitled to have their claims adjudicated in United 
States courts when their claims initially arose. The bill, in effect, 
extends a benefit to Cuban-Americans denied to other groups, including 
Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Americans of Eastern European 
descent, Chinese-Americans, and Vietnamese-Americans. Finally, U.S. 
taxpayers will also have to foot the bill for the litigation of trade 
suits pursuant to NAFTA and GATT/WTO.
  Mr. President, what we really need is a new, innovative, and bold 
approach to Cuba, an approach based on the realities of the situation, 
an approach that can and will succeed. We need a policy based on our 
successes. If we can create a situation where we can get the same kind 
of cooperating on sanctions against Cuba that we were able to put 
together in the case of South Africa, then a sanctions policy could 
work, and could be pursued. But if we cannot, we ought to take a lesson 
from some of our other successes. After all, we did not win the cold 
war by isolating the now former-Soviet Union, through a sophisticated, 
flexible policy that engaged the U.S.S.R. where that made sense.
  Since unilateral United States sanctions are unlikely to be 
effective, and since legislation designed to force our trading partners 
into tighter sanctions against Cuba is more likely to create new 
problems than to solve the Castro problem, we ought to at least 
consider new approaches. We need to at least examine, for example, 
whether more extensive United States contacts with Cuba would 
strengthen Castro or strengthen the prospects for real democratic and 
economic reform in Cuba. What we cannot afford to do is to continue to 
pursue a policy that has not succeeded in the past, and that offers 
even smaller chances of success in the future. Unfortunately, that is 
fundamentally what H.R. 927 is all about; I therefore cannot support 
it. I urge the Senate to defeat this legislation, and to work toward a 
new policy toward Cuba that offers a better chance of bringing long 
overdue, fundamental democratic and economic reform to the Cuban 
people.
  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I rise to address the vote for cloture on 
the Dole-Helms amendment to the Sanctions Act.
  I will be voting for cloture because I wish to see this process move 
along. This bill has been pending all year, and it is time we addressed 
it and moved on. In voting for cloture, however, I want to make clear 
that I do not support this legislation. I think it is a mistake, and I 
do not believe it will achieve the intended results.
  First, this bill will impose trade sanctions on many of our closest 
allies and trading partners throughout the world. That is not going to 
help the people of Cuba in any way, but it is going to hurt American 
companies doing business around the world.
  Second, the bill creates an unprecedented right of action for legal 
claims of former property owners in Cuba. Not only will that impose a 
severe burden on our court system, it will do so without, in anyway 
helping the people who need it most--families and small property owners 
who lost their homes and businesses to the Castro regime. This new 
right of action will also put us into conflict with some companies 
headquartered in some of our closest allies who are now operating 
plants in Cuba.
  As a result of both of these problems, the United States will find 
itself under immediate attack in the World Trade Organization.
  This legislation will only add to the already overwhelming misery of 
the 

[[Page S 15205]]
Cuban people. I do not want to do that, and I know none of my 
colleagues do either. Certainly, we all want to see an end to the 
Castro regime--a cold war relic whose time has passed. I believe, 
however, that Castro's days are numbered. Communism has fallen around 
the world, and it will fall in Cuba as well. We should let it fall of 
its own weight, and then be there to assist the Cuban people in 
developing and nurturing a new democratic successor. This bill will not 
achieve that goal--in fact, it will move in the other direction. I urge 
Senators to oppose it.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum 
call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to now 
proceed as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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