[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 36 (Thursday, March 26, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  CUBA

  (Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, next Tuesday Capitol Hill will be 
visited by various organizations that support the repressive regime's 
agenda which promotes the myth that there is an embargo on food and 
medicine to Cuba. Mr. Speaker, nothing can be further from the truth. 
The United States is in fact the leading humanitarian aid donor country 
to Cuba, more than all of the nations of the world combined. The United 
States has sent more than $227 million in humanitarian donations to the 
people of Cuba.
  The shortages of medicine and food in Cuba is caused by the misguided 
failed Marxist policy of the dictatorship and not what people 
incorrectly perceive as U.S. policy and U.S. laws. The regime redirects 
these supplies to tourist-only hospitals and hotels.
  U.S. policy, in fact, which a majority of the American people support 
according to a new survey released just yesterday by the American 
Enterprise Institute, is not at fault for Cuba's ills. The facts are 
clear. The embargo that must be lifted is the embargo on freedom and 
human rights and democracy which Castro imposes on his people.

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