[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 210 (Monday, December 6, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8920-S8922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Remembering Robert J. Dole

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I thank the distinguished leader for his 
words and his statement about our friend Bob Dole. I also agree with 
him in that we have to stay here and get this work done.
  Madam President, as someone who has observed the evolution of 
relations between the United States and Cuba for nearly 50 years, 
particularly since I first traveled there in 1999, I find the situation 
between our two countries today bewildering, tragic, and exasperating.
  Bewildering, because senior Administration officials--who have 
publicly and privately acknowledged that the 60-year policy of 
unilateral U.S. sanctions, isolation, and threats has failed to achieve 
any of its objectives and instead has hurt the Cuban people--have

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nevertheless adopted that same failed policy as their own.
  Tragic, because the policy has emboldened Cuba's hard-liners who have 
cracked down even more on citizens who dare to peacefully protest about 
shortages of food, medicine, and electricity, and against government 
repression. And it has exacerbated the crisis that has engulfed the 
island due to the COVID pandemic and the government's dysfunctional 
economic policies.
  Exasperating, because anyone who understands Cuba could have 
predicted what has happened since the Trump Administration reversed the 
Obama Administration's policy of engagement and would have taken steps 
to mitigate it. Instead, the current policy is making the situation 
even worse.
  For the past ten months, I have urged the White House to not repeat 
past mistakes when it comes to our relations with Cuba's government and 
the Cuban people and to pursue a policy based on our longterm national 
interests. I deeply regret that has not yet happened.
  Instead, this administration's policy, so far, has been dictated by a 
tiny but vocal constituency in this country that has always opposed 
U.S. engagement with Cuba. It is a policy that history has shown is 
doomed to fail.
  Currently, the United States and Cuba have diplomatic relations, but 
to what end? There is no meaningful diplomacy being conducted, and our 
Embassy in Havana and Cuba's Embassy in Washington are barely 
functioning. Consular operations have ceased. The dialogues we had with 
the Cuban Government on issues of mutual interest, from law enforcement 
to human rights to public health--dialogues the Trump Administration 
cut off--have not resumed. How can this be in our national interest?
  While Cuba remains on the list of state sponsors of terrorism due to 
a last-minute, politically driven, vindictive, and factually 
indefensible decision of the Trump administration, we continue to have 
diplomatic relations. Is this not irreconcilable? And whatever became 
of the administration's review of that deeply flawed designation which 
was promised months ago?
  Cultural, scientific, and educational exchanges have largely ended. 
This is neither justified nor in our national interest. The COVID 
pandemic provided an obvious opportunity for cooperation between 
American and Cuban scientists, but that opportunity, like so many 
others over the years, was squandered due to politics, distrust, and 
spite.
  The U.S. Treasury Department continues to block remittances from 
Cuban Americans to their relatives on the island even though it is 
their money, not Treasury's. Shouldn't Cuban Americans have the right 
to decide for themselves whether to send their own money to their 
relatives rather than having that decision dictated by the White House? 
Remittances help Cubans be less dependent on the government, improve 
their standard of living, and provide the seed capital for Cuba's 
growing private sector, which, today, comprises one-third of the Cuban 
workforce.
  The number of remittances siphoned off by the Cuban Government is a 
small fraction of what some have falsely claimed, and is no more than 
what other governments charge. Let's base our policy on facts rather 
than on rumor and what plays well domestically.
  And Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida, is the only country besides 
North Korea where travel by Americans is severely restricted despite 
our common history and cultural traditions. It is as ridiculous as it 
is self-defeating.
  The White House has repeatedly said that ``democracy and human 
rights'' are at the core of its policy toward Cuba. Those are 
aspirations--laudable aspirations--but they are not a policy. We all 
want to see a Cuba where political freedom and fundamental rights, 
especially freedom of expression, are respected and where an 
independent judiciary protects the right of due process. Those rights 
are severely restricted in Cuba today, as they are in many countries, 
including some recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. 
aid.
  Where we disagree is on how best to support the Cuban people's 
struggle to obtain those rights.
  I have asked, but I have no idea what the administration's practical 
objectives are in Cuba or how it proposes to achieve them. After being 
told 6 months ago that the State Department was conducting a review of 
its policy, we have yet to see any change from the policy it inherited 
from the Trump administration a year ago. What happened to the review? 
What did it say?
  Several administration officials have justified the continuation of 
President Trump's punishing sanctions because of the public protests in 
Cuba on July 11. They say ``everything changed'' on July 11.
  Cuba is changing. Access to social media and cell phones has 
dramatically increased. Attitudes among the younger generation are 
changing. The Cuban Government is making historic, albeit hesitant, 
reforms to relax restrictions on private businesses. President Obama's 
opening to Cuba, which lasted only 2 years was instrumental in helping 
to bring about these changes.
  Rather than acknowledge the unprecedented progress during that short 
period, those who defend a policy of sanctions say Obama' s policy of 
openness failed because Cuba remains a repressive, one-party state. 
They completely ignore that the same was true for 50 years before Obama 
and for the 5 years since Obama. When it comes to helping to bring 
positive changes to the people of Cuba, President Obama wins hand down.
  But, today, the United States is, once again, on the sidelines, 
clinging to an outdated policy that history has shown will not succeed. 
In fact, it is having the opposite effect by denying opportunities to 
both Cubans and Americans.
  U.S. policy toward Cuba is replete with contradictions, hypocrisy, 
arrogance, and missed opportunities. Cuba is an impoverished country 
that poses no threat to the United States; yet we treat it as if it 
does largely because of our own actions. While we maintain an intricate 
web of unilateral sanctions that every nation in this hemisphere 
opposes, the Russians and Chinese are aggressively filling the vacuum 
as anyone who visits Cuba today can readily see.
  Engaging with a government whose policies are anathema to our own 
does not bestow legitimacy on that government's leaders or acceptance 
of its repressive policies. If that were the case, we should cease 
engaging not only with Cuba but with dozens of governments around the 
world, including several U.S. partners, Saudi Arabia and Egypt being 
obvious examples.
  We condemn the arbitrary arrests, sham trials, laws that criminalize 
civil society, and the mistreatment and imprisonment of political 
dissidents. These abuses are common to many countries, and we apply 
targeted sanctions, and we restrict aid. But, for purely domestic 
political reasons, we continue to impose a vast web of sweeping 
sanctions against Cuba even when the administration knows they have not 
worked.
  I have said it many times: Our policy toward Cuba needs to be 
guided--first and foremost--by what is in our national interest, not by 
what is in the interest of a tiny domestic constituency and not by 
making demands that we know the Cubans won't submit to.
  Engaging with Cuba affords U.S. diplomats and American citizens the 
opportunity to build relationships with Cuban counterparts and identify 
issues of common interest on which to make progress. We saw that during 
the Obama administration despite some who could not bring themselves to 
admit it.
  Over time, that is how we can then begin to address the more 
difficult issues that divide us, knowing that it is the Cuban people, 
not the United States, who will ultimately determine their country's 
future.
  This administration has had 10 months to demonstrate that continuing 
the failed Trump policy of trying to bludgeon the Cuban authorities 
into submission can produce positive results. There is not a shred of 
evidence that it can. It never has. Are we going to waste another year 
and another after that?
  I hope not, but that is what will happen if the White House does not 
change course and show the kind of thoughtful leadership on Cuba that 
we saw during the Obama administration and that was welcomed by a large 
majority of the American people. As Einstein said and so many have 
repeated, ``Insanity

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is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different 
results.'' This administration can do better. It needs to do better.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  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. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.