[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 179 (Monday, November 13, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16974-S16977]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     CUBAN LIBERTY AND DEMOCRATIC SOLIDARITY [LIBERTAD] ACT OF 1995

  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask that the Chair lay before the 
Senate a message from the House on H.R. 927, a bill to seek 
international sanctions against the Castro government in Cuba, to plan 
for support of a transition government leading to a democratically 
elected government in Cuba, and for other purposes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the following message 
from the House of Representatives:

       Resolved, That the House disagree to the amendment of the 
     Senate to the bill to seek international sanctions against 
     the Castro government in Cuba, to plan for support of a 
     transition government leading to a democratically elected 
     government in Cuba, and for other purposes'', and ask a 
     conference with the Senate on the disagreeing votes of the 
     two Houses thereon.
       Ordered, That Mr. Gilman, Mr. Burton of Indiana, Ms. Ros-
     Lehtinen, Mr. King, Mr. Diaz-Balart, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. 
     Gejdenson, Mr. Torricelli, and Mr. Menendez be the managers 
     of the conference on the part of the House.

  Mr. DODD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senate on the pending matter for such time as I may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to debate the message 
from the House requesting a conference on H.R. 927, the Cuban Liberty 
and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1995, and the naming of conferees.
  I find it somewhat remarkable that today, of all days, we are being 
asked to deal with this matter, of all matters. I would have thought 
that today we would be devoting ourselves instead to finding our way 
out of the serious box we have fallen into over the budget impasse.
  Let us remember what is about to occur shortly in this Chamber. As of 
midnight tonight, the Federal Government ceases all but essential 
services. Likewise, the Government's ability to borrow shortly will be 
exhausted. Keeping our Government operating and keeping the U.S. 
Treasury solvent should, in my view, be the only business of this body 
today. Even if it were not in the throes of a critical fiscal crisis, I 
would still argue the priorities of the leadership in taking up this 
particular bill at this juncture.
  The Senate, as my colleagues will recall, has already exhausted 5 
days debating this bill. There is no pressing reason why we must turn 
to it again now or go to a conference today or tomorrow. It is not as 
though the Senate has nothing else to do. We have yet to complete the 
bulk of the so-called must-pass legislation for this year. To date, we 
have completed action on only 4 of the 13 appropriations bills that we 
must enact--only 4 of the 13. We have yet to complete action on budget 
reconciliation, on welfare reform, on Medicaid and Medicare reform.
  Instead, here we are debating going to conference with the House on 
legislation that has no particular urgency to it whatsoever. Fidel 
Castro has been around for more than three decades. I do not think 
anyone seriously believes that this legislation is likely to markedly 
alter his status or the current situation in Cuba any time soon, no 
matter how much we may wish it so. In fact, as I argued when the Senate 
spent 5 days debating this bill last month, I believe this legislation 
is fatally flawed.
  In this case of the House-passed version, this bill would actually do 
serious damage to the United States, especially to our Federal courts. 
Frankly, Mr. President, this legislation is nothing more than special 
interest legislation par excellence. It is particularly ironic, Mr. 
President, that we should be here today deliberating legislation that 
falls within the jurisdiction of the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee.
  As I am sure my colleagues are aware, the Foreign Relations Committee 
has been basically shut down for the past 3 months by the chairman of 
the committee, with the concurrence of the majority leader. Eighteen 
ambassadorial nominees, nominees to China, South Africa, Pakistan, the 
Philippines, and several dozens of treaties, including START II and the 
Chemical Weapons Convention, have been held hostage by the chairman of 
the committee until he secures passage on S. 908, the State Department 
reorganization legislation.
  The distinguished chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 
has been unable to pass that legislation to date because in its current 
form it does not enjoy bipartisan support. I appreciate the fact that 
the Senator from North Carolina is unhappy that he cannot get his bill 
passed. That circumstance, Mr. President, happens to all of us in this 
body from time to time. However, I believe it is the height of 
irresponsibility to hold up nearly all the other business of the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee over one piece of legislation. I believe 
the action is almost unprecedented, if not in fact unprecedented.
  I, for one, would argue that it is far more important that the United 
States be ably represented abroad at the highest diplomatic levels in 
countries where there are a great many U.S. interests at stake. China, 
Pakistan, South Africa, Indonesia--these are all countries of critical 
importance to the 

[[Page S 16975]]
United States and the conduct of our foreign policy.
  I also believe that arms control must and should continue to be a 
high priority for the United States. START II and the Chemical Weapons 
Convention are critical elements in that arms control strategy. I would 
assert, Mr. President, that the American people care far more about 
arms control and being well represented abroad than they care about how 
some boxes get drawn on some State Department organizational chart or 
who draws them.
  Under the current circumstances, I am not prepared to facilitate 
efforts by the majority to pick and choose the foreign policy items 
that they want acted upon while ambassadorial nominees and other major 
agenda items on the Foreign Relations Committee continue to be held 
hostage.
  I would be far more sympathetic to proceeding with the matter before 
us if I thought some critical foreign policy issue were at stake. That 
is not the case, Mr. President. The motivation for moving the pending 
matter this week and today is driven primarily by a domestic political 
agenda and by a Presidential straw poll that will be held this coming 
weekend in Florida.
  If the leadership of the House and the Senate thinks that this bill 
is of such high priority that it must be acted upon this week, then I 
would suggest that the House take up and pass the Senate version of the 
bill. While I believe that this version, the Senate version, has 
serious deficiencies, it is light years better than the House-passed 
version of this same bill. Unfortunately, they are not prepared to take 
that course of action because the sponsors of the bill are eager to 
restore title III of the bill in conference, the most controversial 
title of the bill, that was deleted in this body.
  Mr. President, I am obviously prepared to speak at some length about 
my substantive objections to the bill at an appropriate moment. I 
respectfully urge that we forget about dealing with this matter and 
return to the critical issues that threaten to close down the Federal 
Government in a matter of hours and to call into question the full 
faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury.
  Mr. President, I mentioned earlier there were some 18 nominees that 
were at stake being held hostage. Let me identify them, if I can: Sri 
Lanka, which has been vacant since August of this year; the APEC 
convention; Cambodia; Malaysia, vacant since June; Thailand, vacant 
since August of this year; Indonesia, vacant since July; Oman, vacant 
since June; Pakistan, vacant since September; Lebanon, vacant for 1 
year, no ambassador there; South Africa; Cameroon; the Marshall 
Islands; Fiji; China; Mali; Rwanda; The Gambia.
  All of these places, Mr. President, are without U.S. representation. 
We could have dealt with these matters. They have come out of committee 
without any real controversy. It is not as if some of these people here 
are particularly controversial at all. That is not the issue. I would 
understand that if that were the case. We made the decision here we are 
not going to deal with these Ambassadors over one piece of legislation.
  But it is not just the Ambassadors. I mentioned earlier that treaties 
are being held up as well. START II, the Chemical Weapons Convention, 
nine bilateral investment treaties, five mutual legal assistance 
treaties, five extradition treaties, three tax treaties, two 
environmental treaties, the Law of the Sea Convention, the Women's 
Convention, the American Convention on Human Rights.

  Now, again, Mr. President, some of these matters might provoke some 
controversy. I would not suggest that they are necessarily in the same 
status as these ambassadorial nominations. But, nonetheless, these 
matters certainly, I would argue, are of equal or greater significance 
than the pending legislation that we would like to appoint conferees 
on. As important as that legislation may be in the eyes of some people, 
it does not deserve to have a status higher than all of these other 
matters and higher than the status that we ought to be providing to the 
START II Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention that has been 
pending for some time.
  Now, Mr. President, I mentioned earlier when we had the debate on the 
Cuban legislation that I thought the bill was fatally flawed. I still 
believe that to be the case. Let me say once again this is not an issue 
of whether or not you like Fidel Castro or are happy with the present 
situation in Cuba. I will state once again for the record, I am not. I 
would like nothing more than to see democracy come to Cuba, that a 
dictator leave, that we try to be able to achieve some human rights in 
that country and a restoration of representative government. That is 
not the issue here before us.
  The issue is, is this particular strategy incorporated in this 
legislation the correct course to be followed? This legislation does 
not in any way change the present embargo, although there are many who 
feel the embargo ought to be modified because it is not achieving the 
desired results.
  The problem with this bill is that it places some contingencies on 
other foreign policy matters that ought to be of greater weight than 
what we are presently doing or not doing in Cuba. I said at the outset 
of that debate that when we consider matters such as the legislation 
before us, we ought to ask ourselves two basic questions: Is what is 
being proposed in the best interests of our own country? And is it 
likely to achieve the desired results?
  Mr. President, as you know, I had grave concerns about the 
legislation as it was originally drafted. I believe the bill would have 
done serious harm to our own country, particularly to our court system. 
Fortunately, the centerpiece of that bill that would have caused that 
harm, title III, is no longer a part of the Senate version. As I 
mentioned earlier, I thought it would be at least better, if the House 
wanted to move this matter along, to just take up the Senate-passed 
bill and pass that. But thanks to Senator Kassebaum and others who 
worked so hard to correct this serious problem, it is no longer a part 
of the Senate version.

  Notwithstanding, however, Mr. President, this change, the two basic 
questions still remain: Is this bill in our own interests? Will it 
achieve the desired results? Regrettably, I believe the answer to both 
of those questions is still no. It is not in our interest, Mr. 
President, to complicate our relations with the governments of Russia 
or the other New Independent States that were formerly a part of the 
Soviet Union.
  Yet provisions of this bill would do just that, by linking our 
assistance to Russia and these New Independent States based on their 
policies toward Cuba. We provide assistance to Russia and the New 
Independent States because, I believe, Mr. President, we want to see 
them carry out the kinds of reforms and programs that we are funding, 
because we want to continue to strengthen this still fragile democracy 
that exists in these nations. Conditioning our aid to Russia and to the 
New Independent States based on what is going on in Cuba, I think, is 
counterproductive, and yet that is exactly what we do in this bill.
  It seems to me, Mr. President, we have to ask ourselves, is it in our 
interest to try to shore up these democratic institutions, these 
fragile democracies that only a few months ago were in the grips of 
communism? Fragile as they are, should we be linking that assistance 
based on whether or not they continue to provide concessional aid to 
Cuba? We may not like the fact that they do that, but are we going to 
jeopardize the democracies in Russia and the New Independent States 
solely because they maintain concessional aid to Cuba? Yet, that is 
exactly what the bill does.

  Again, I do not necessarily disagree if people want to have some 
strong language about what we do, what kind of aid we provide to Cuba, 
what kind of support we provide. That is a legitimate debate. But to 
say to Russia and the New Independent States, ``We are going to cut off 
aid to you, we are going to deny you the kind of support'' that these 
countries need if they are going to succeed in the transition to 
democracy, based on the fact that they provide concessional aid to 
Cuba, I think, is very wrongheaded.
  Provisions of this bill also impinge on arms control. Again, one can 
argue about whether or not you want to proceed with arms control. I 
think it ought to be a source of some collective pride and sense of 
well-being that today we no longer have any nuclear weapons that 
formerly resided in the 

[[Page S 16976]]
Soviet Union pointed at us. There has been a remarkable degree of 
success in dismantling that nuclear arsenal. And yet today, this bill 
on Cuba threatens, in my view, our arms control agreements with Russia 
and the New Independent States, specifically when it comes to Russian 
verification of United States compliance with these arms control 
agreements.
  As I said a moment ago, it is certainly legitimate for the United 
States to discuss the types of activities that appropriately fall 
within the scope of verification of arms control treaties. That should 
be done bilaterally with the Government of Russia, not unilaterally 
imposed by the Congress in the context of its debate about Cuba.
  Other provisions of this legislation bar Cuban participation in 
international financial institutions. That might be fine, but the bar 
goes until after democracy has been established in that country. We all 
know the critical roles played by the World Bank and the International 
Monetary Fund in the early days of Russia's transition to democracy and 
to a market economy. It is foolhardy, in my view, Mr. President, to 
prohibit the IMF or the World Bank from offering their assistance and 
expertise to a post-Castro government.
  Mr. President, my objections to the underlying bill were based on 
several points. One is that, of course, to be tying our aid to Russia 
and to the New Independent States, based on Russia's continuing support 
of concessionary aid to Cuba, does not make a great deal of sense to 
me. In fact, to tie those two issues together jeopardizes, in fact, the 
very fragile democracy that exists in Russia and in the New Independent 
States.
  Second, to tie arms control is just as dangerous, in my view. We have 
achieved great success in the last number of months by turning those 
missiles, which were pointed at our shores, away from our shores and, 
in fact, the arms control efforts have proven a great success. To link 
a future arms control success, based on whether or not Russia provides 
concessionary aid or assistance, to Cuba seems to me to have misplaced 
priorities. Whatever one thinks about Cuba, you do not jeopardize arms 
control because Russia does what 57 other countries in the world are 
doing--that is, providing aid or assistance, or allowing their 
businesses to operate in Cuba. Again, I am not applauding those 
particular actions, necessarily, but I do not think you want to link 
the foreign policy of this country--particularly the vital interests 
that we have with regard to Russia and the New Independent States--
based on a relationship that those countries may have with Cuba.
  This bill--the underlying bill--would also have the United States 
spend more money on TV Marti. Here we are cutting public broadcasting 
in the United States, cutting into those budgets; yet, we turn around 
and support additional funding to TV Marti--a program that, by any 
estimation, with all the studies that have been done, has been an 
abysmal failure. GAO report after GAO report has found it is totally 
ineffective, that virtually nobody in Cuba watches it, that it is a 
total waste of taxpayer money. Those are not my conclusions, but the 
conclusions of the General Accounting Office. Yet, we are going to 
spend more money on TV Marti at a very time, as I said, when, frankly, 
we are told that resources are not there to support our own public 
broadcasting efforts in this country.
  As I said, Mr. President, during the consideration of the 
legislation, the only individual who has truly benefited from the 
debate, in my view, has been Fidel Castro. Once again, we have managed 
to make him larger than life and given him excuses for why his 
government has failed or why the Cuban economy is in a shambles. Once 
again, we will force our allies to come to his defense because they 
profoundly disagree with our own tactics.
  Consider what happened in the United Nations only a few days ago, 
where a resolution on Cuba was offered. We had one country that 
supports us--one out of the entire world stood with us with regard to 
Cuba, and that was Israel. I point out, as I have in the past, Israel, 
in fact, has businesses, Israeli businesses, doing business in Cuba. So 
instead of having some profound affect on our allies around the world, 
we are achieving just the opposite.

  So, Mr. President, I object to us moving forward, for a number of 
reasons. Let me reiterate them for my colleagues. One is that I do not 
know why, today, of all days, with the Government about to shut its 
doors and close down, with all of the other pending matters we should 
be raising before us, here we are dealing with a bill focused on Cuba. 
As I said earlier, we have only dealt with 4 appropriations bills out 
of 13. Why do we not deal with some of those appropriations bills? It 
seems to me that ought to have a higher priority than a piece of 
legislation that will have virtually no effect on Cuba, no effect on 
Fidel Castro. Yet, we bring that up today, with no particular urgency 
about it whatsoever.
  Second, here we are moving to this bill, which comes under the 
appropriate jurisdiction of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 
Yet, we are going to rush this bill to the forefront, while 18 nominees 
to serve as ambassadors to the United States have been in limbo for 
weeks now--not days, weeks. These are 18 ambassadors that are going to 
critical countries, like Pakistan, China, and Indonesia, where we have 
critical United States interests at stake. Yet, those nominees cannot 
be voted on because the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee 
wants another bill to be resolved--a bill he has an interest in. Now, I 
respect his interests. I disagree with him on what he wants to do in 
major part, but I know what it is like to have a bill you are 
interested in. But this ties up 18 nominees to serve as ambassadors of 
the United States to these foreign countries, and a number of 
critically important treaties, including START II and the Chemical 
Weapons Convention, nine bilateral investment treaties, and a host of 
other agreements, all of which have been held up, not because there is 
great disagreement with them.
  These treaties ought to be debated if people have disagreements. Let 
us debate it here on the floor of the Senate and vote on them. But here 
it is, the majority controlling, saying these nominees cannot come 
forward to serve as ambassadors, and a whole host of treaties cannot be 
brought up. We will not deal with the reorganization of the State 
Department, but we are going to rush to the forefront a bill on Cuba.
  It seems to me that we have misplaced priorities here, Mr. President. 
On this very day, hours away from shutting down the Federal Government, 
we are going to debate about whether or not we are going to cut off aid 
to Russia and jeopardize arms control because we are unhappy with how 
we see things in Cuba. Try to explain that to the American public. If 
they wonder what is going on in Washington, consider what we are 
debating today. Here it is, the majority, which controls the debate and 
the agenda, brings up a bill regarding Cuba. We are hours away from 
shutting down the Federal Government, while not even considering 
bringing up, as I said earlier, the nominees for the important 
ambassadorial posts and these important treaties, not to mention 
appropriations bills, Medicare reform, Medicaid reform. All of that 
takes a back bench while we deal with Cuba.

  I mentioned earlier, I have problems with the underlying bill itself. 
The fact that we are going to link United States assistance to Russia 
and the New Independent States based on whether Russia and the New 
Independent States provide concessionary aid to Cuba--explain the logic 
of that to me, why you would jeopardize fragile democracies critically 
important to the United States and to Western Europe based on their 
concessionary aid to an island 90 miles off our shore, and why you 
jeopardize arms control--a critically important issue to this country. 
And yet this bill says that we will not provide the kind of assistance 
to the arms control effort if, in fact, Russia continues to provide 
concessionary aid to Cuba.
  It just does not make any sense. The international organizations here 
are saying no aid to a post-Castro government--not Castro. Forget that. 
No aid to a post-Castro government in transition.
  All of us recognize the value of the international organizations--a 
few months ago when Russia was going through that transition--yet in 
this bill we say with regard to Cuba ``No international financial 
assistance'' for 

[[Page S 16977]]
the World Bank or the IMF until democracy is absolutely established.
  Were we to apply those provisions to the New Independent States and 
some of the conditionality in this bill, we would still be denying that 
kind of assistance to them as they struggle to get their footing into 
established democracy, a firm democracy in their country.
  Mr. President, I feel very strongly that today to be raising on the 
floor of this body a bill involving Cuba, which I believe is 
fundamentally flawed--I realize it passed this body, but I know a 
number of my colleagues think it is a bad bill. Because we are going to 
have a primary, a straw vote I guess it is, in Florida this weekend, we 
are rushing to get the Cuba bill done.
  So the closure of the Federal Government, the important 
appropriations bills, Medicare, Medicaid, they all take a back seat 
here now so that we can score some points to maybe win a straw poll in 
Florida. That is the only reason this bill is being brought up now--the 
only reason.
  In fact, if they wanted to deal with this issue expeditiously, the 
House could adopt the Senate version and send it back over to us. No, 
that is not the case.
  So today we are going to try and move through to deal with this Cuban 
aid bill while we put aside the very issue of whether or not the 
Federal Government is going to close its doors.

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