[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 24 (Monday, February 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S535-S538]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Cloture Motion

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under 
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the 
     nomination of Executive Calendar No. 362, Homer L. Wilkes, of 
     Mississippi, to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural 
     Resources and Environment.
         Charles E. Schumer, Richard Blumenthal, Catherine Cortez 
           Masto, Richard J. Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jacky 
           Rosen, Margaret Wood Hassan, Mark Kelly, Benjamin L. 
           Cardin, Brian Schatz, Debbie Stabenow, Angus S. King, 
           Jr., Patrick J. Leahy, Martin Heinrich, Tim Kaine, Gary 
           C. Peters, Chris Van Hollen.

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
mandatory quorum calls for the cloture motions filed today, February 7, 
be waived.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                          open app markets act

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, here in the United States, the 
mobile app market represents a reliable multibillion-dollar payday for 
Big Tech. In 2020, Americans downloaded 13.4 billion apps onto their 
mobile devices.
  Needless to say, mobile apps are a key component of our digital 
economy, so it may be surprising to learn that this market is largely 
unregulated, unless you count the influence of the two mega 
corporations that created it.
  Apple and Google have abused their power and used their status as 
gatekeepers to stifle innovation and penalize developers who want to 
work alongside them rather than ceding control over their products. 
This is bad for the industry. It is bad for consumers. It is bad for 
the country.
  These gatekeeping tendencies aren't just a bump in the road for 
developers; they are a roadblock that completely closes off avenues of 
competition. Apple, for example, forces developers to use their 
exorbitantly expensive App Store payment system, which funnels profits 
away from the creators, and it raises prices for consumers. It is a 
take-it-or-leave-it arrangement. Of course, when developers do take the 
deal, they leave their relationship with their customers behind because 
the terms prohibit them from dealing directly with the people who use 
their products. They also have to accept that Apple and Google will not 
only prioritize native applications, but they will take their 
competitors' confidential business information and use it against them.
  Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed my Open App Markets 
Act, which is a bill we have worked some very long hours on. Finally, 
we are addressing the stranglehold Big Tech has on the digital app 
market. I really do thank Senator Blumenthal and his staff, as well as 
our cosponsors, Senators Klobuchar, Rubio, Lummis, Booker, Graham, 
Kennedy, Hirono, Hawley, and Chairman Durbin, for putting in so much 
time and effort to create this bipartisan piece of legislation.
  This bill will reset the rules of the road to protect competition and 
consumers by allowing consumers to access third-party apps and app 
stores, by prohibiting app store owners from locking developers into 
in-app payment arrangements, by ensuring that app developers are 
allowed to offer competitive pricing, and by preventing app stores from 
misusing confidential business information or app store rankings to 
disadvantage developers. If app store gatekeepers violate these rules 
of the road, the bill allows for developer lawsuits. It also includes 
safeguards to allow app stores to protect the privacy, security, and 
safety of consumers, as well as their own intellectual property rights.
  It is bipartisan, and it is a good, solid, strong first step. But, 
remember, our tradition of maintaining competitive marketplaces isn't 
the only thing at stake here.
  This weekend, the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing 
drew in 16 million viewers. That is down from the last Winter Games in 
2018, so hopefully, this means that the various campaigns exposing the 
crimes and manipulation of the Chinese Communist Party are making a 
difference.
  But, still, those 16 million people and their families are taking in 
Chinese propaganda. The Games' corporate sponsors weren't worried about 
that; they were happy to take advantage of all those eyeballs. And we 
know NBC hopes to surpass the nearly $2 billion in revenue they pulled 
in during the Tokyo Games.
  Protecting that competitiveness is important, but I would argue that 
protecting the human rights of people those sponsors and broadcasters 
are happy to sweep under the rug is even more important. And right at 
this very moment, Big Tech is facilitating crimes against humanity in 
China.
  Beijing is notorious for censoring speech critical of the communist 
government, but part of their grand strategy to silence dissent 
involves strong-arming corporations seeking access to the very 
lucrative Chinese market. It is not enough to offer an exciting 
product; you have to play nice with the CCP or else you are out. You 
can't be in their market. That means staying quiet about genocide in 
Xinjiang or violent repression in Hong Kong and doing everything in 
your power to make sure your customers stay silent too.
  The Open App Markets Act has received an outpouring of support from 
human rights activists who see firsthand how corporate gatekeeping 
actively endangers the lives of dissidents, activists, Uighur Muslims, 
Mongols, Tibetans, Hong Kong freedom fighters, and other innocent 
people the CCP has chosen to brutalize. We received a letter of support 
for the Open App Markets Act signed by many of these individuals that I 
would like to share. They wrote, in part:

       China suppresses nearly all dissent using its notorious 
     ``Great Firewall'' internet filtering system and through the 
     cooperation of domestic and foreign companies that are 
     willing to block and remove accounts, content, and 
     applications at the unchallenged request of Chinese 
     authorities.
       Few American companies are as subservient to the Chinese 
     government as Apple. Apple willingly censors dissenting 
     voices and independent media for all in China and Hong Kong 
     using its control over the App Store.

  We received another letter from the human rights organization 
GreatFire that details specific examples of Apple doing the bidding of 
the Chinese Communist Party. They wrote in part:

       GreatFire, an organization dedicated to fighting internet 
     censorship, started monitoring Apple's censorship in November 
     2013, when Apple decided to remove our ``Free Weibo'' 
     application from the Chinese App Store. Apple did not even 
     wait for the intervention of any Chinese judicial authority 
     to determine if our app had actually broken any Chinese law. 
     It collaborated with the Chinese authorities and dealt with 
     our app the same way it has continued to deal with many more 
     apps: by enforcing arbitrary and politically motivated 
     censorship to ensure its financial interest.

  I ask unanimous consent to have these two letters printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                 January 31, 2022.
     Senator Dick Durbin,
     Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary,
     Washington, DC.
     Senator Chuck Grassley,
     Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Chair Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, and Members of 
     the Senate Judiciary Committee: We write as Chinese human 
     rights activists, pro-democracy movements, national security 
     experts, and members of persecuted religious communities to 
     share our deep concerns with Apple's use of its monopolistic 
     dominance and its collusion with the Chinese government to 
     stifle freedom of expression in China. As the Committee 
     considers legislation to rein in the abuses of tech firms, we 
     encourage it to help dissenting voices and efforts to offer 
     privacy and security tools in China through protecting the 
     right to sideload, as included in the Open App Markets Act.

[[Page S536]]

       The Chinese Communist Party maintains its grip on power and 
     its regional expansionism through operating the most 
     sophisticated censorship and surveillance apparatus in 
     history. China suppresses nearly all dissent using its 
     notorious `Great Firewall' internet filtering system and 
     through the cooperation of domestic and foreign companies 
     that are willing to block and remove accounts, content, and 
     applications at the unchallenged request of Chinese 
     authorities.
       Few American companies are as subservient to the Chinese 
     government as Apple. Apple willingly censors dissenting 
     voices and independent media for all in China and Hong Kong 
     using its control over App Store. As the New York Times, 
     human rights organizations, and members of this Committee 
     have thoroughly documented, Apple has blocked thousands of 
     applications for iOS users in China and Hong Kong at the 
     request of Chinese censors. Apple's decade-long track record 
     cooperation with Chinese censorship is sweeping and stunning, 
     including through its blocking of:
       HKmap.live, a coordination tool used by protestors bravely 
     standing up to China's attempts to destroy Hong Kong's 
     independence and democracy;
       Bible and Quranic apps, including the Olive Tree Bible 
     study guide;
       Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, Congressionally-
     funded independent media organizations that provides news in 
     Chinese, Uyghur, and Tibetan languages; and,
       Anti-censorship services, including apps funded by 
     Congress, designed to bypass the Great Firewall to provide 
     unfiltered and secure access to information, social media, 
     and news.
       While Apple claims to be a defender of human rights in the 
     West, Apple has deliberately placed Chinese citizen's lives 
     in the hands of the Chinese government for profit, knowing 
     the grave consequences. As the Congressional-Executive 
     Commission on China and others have warned, Apple hosts the 
     private data of its Chinese users in data centers controlled 
     by the Chinese government without the safeguards that would 
     prevent spying, including weakening its access controls and 
     encryption. As a result, Chinese citizens are unable to 
     access independent news, practice their faith, or express 
     themselves freely without real fear of the brutal repression 
     of the state.
       While our organizations have decades of expertise fight 
     back against China's repression, Apple's complete dominance 
     over iOS blocks us from offering tools to bypass censorship, 
     prevent spying, and promote democracy. Our pleas and 
     campaigns for Apple to do the right thing have been ignored 
     by Apple's leadership. If we were allowed to provide apps 
     outside of the censored App Store, also known as sideloading, 
     we would be able finally offer Chinese communities with tools 
     to defeat the Great Firewall, such as Ultrasurf, Psiphon, and 
     FreeGate. The Open App Markets Act's protections for 
     sideloading would help us open up the world to hundreds of 
     millions more Chinese people living under repression aided by 
     Apple.
       As the Senate Judiciary Committee considers the Open App 
     Markets Act, we encourage it stand firm on behalf of freedom 
     of expression and human rights in China through protecting 
     our right to offer a lifeline to dissidents, religious 
     communities, and all those banned by the Chinese Communist 
     Party.
           Sincerely,
       Organizations: Uyghur Human Rights Project; China Change; 
     Citizen Power Initiatives for China; The Hong Kong Watch; 
     Regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts; Tibetan 
     Association of Indiana; Atlanta Tibetan Association; Boston 
     Tibetan Association; Tibetan Association of Vermont; Tibetan 
     Association of Idaho; Tibetan Association of Ithaca; Tibetan 
     Community of New York and New Jersey; Sound of Hope Radio 
     Network; Dialogue China; Democratic Party of China.
       Individuals: Jianli Yang, Founder and President of Citizen 
     power Initiatives for China & Tiananmen Survivor and former 
     political prisoner of China; Cai Xia, Editor-in-Chief of 
     Yibao, Former Professor of the CCP Central Party School; 
     Nanyang Li, Visiting Fellow at Hoovers Institutes, leading 
     Chinese human rights activist, daughter of Li Rui, a former 
     secretary of Mao Zedong; Calvin Yu, Chinese civil society 
     organizer, philanthropist; Deyu Wang, Persecuted Chinese 
     Christian; Daniel Gong, Human rights activist; Lydia Li, 
     Independent scholar and human rights activist; Liang Wang, 
     Chinese artist and human rights activist; Ming Wu, Human 
     rights activist, Member of the Chinese New Citizens' 
     Movement; Davis Zeng, Analyst, CitiBank, human rights 
     activist; Shan Jiang, Member of the Chinese New Citizens' 
     Movement, human rights activist; Shengchun Luo, Wife of the 
     detained Chinese New Citizens' Movement leader Ding Jiaxi; 
     Pinghui Wu, Chinese human rights activist.
       Ni Wang, Chinese human rights activist; Wayne Hong, Concert 
     Manager, Chinese human rights activist; Qi Xue, Independent 
     scholar, Chinese human rights activist; Jeanette Tong, 
     Chinese human rights activist; Hai Lin, Medical scientist, 
     Chinese human rights activist; Anna Chen, Victim of Chinese 
     religious persecution, Chinese human rights activist; Amy Ma, 
     Chinese Muslim activist; Shaoping Wu, Human rights lawyer; 
     Matt Trueman, Activist; Amir George, Pastor; Mike Mo (Hong 
     Kong), Former District Legislator of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 
     student leader; Joey Siu (Hong Kong), Director, the Hong Kong 
     Watch, Hong Kong student leader; Yu Hsin (Hong Kong), Hong 
     Kong journalist.
       Harry Fu, Chinese human rights activist; Rui Liu, Chinese 
     human rights activist; Wenwen Song, Chinese human rights 
     activist; Senfen Wei, Chinese human rights activist; Liping 
     Huang, Director of Citizen Power Initiatives for China; Hong 
     Zhou, Chinese human rights activist; Jia He, Chinese human 
     rights activist; Rory O'Connor, Founder of Athenai Institute; 
     John Metz, Director of Athenai Institute; Jing Zhang, Chinese 
     human rights activist; Sufi Laghari, Executive Director at 
     Sindhi Foundation; Lianchao Han, Expert on Chinese Internet 
     censorship and surveillance.
                                  ____



                                                    GreatFire,

                                                 January 28, 2022.
     Subject: Censorship by Apple.

       Dear Chair Durbin, Ranking Member Grassley, and Members of 
     the Senate Judiciary Committee: As the Committee considers 
     legislation to address the power of Big Tech, we write to 
     share our research and longstanding concerns regarding 
     Apple's censorship on behalf of the People's Republic of 
     China and other repressive regimes.
       GreatFire, an organization dedicated to fighting internet 
     censorship, started monitoring Apple's censorship in November 
     2013, when Apple decided to remove our ``FreeWeibo'' 
     application from the Chinese App Store. Apple did not even 
     wait for the intervention of any Chinese judicial authority 
     to determine if our app had actually broken any Chinese law. 
     It collaborated with the Chinese authorities and dealt with 
     our app the same way it has continued to deal with many more 
     apps: by enforcing arbitrary and politically motivated 
     censorship to ensure its financial interests.
       In 2019, we launched AppleCensorship.com, a website 
     monitoring Apple's removal of apps on its App Stores around 
     the world. Over the last three years, we have uncovered 
     numerous cases of app removals, particularly in China, where 
     Apple collaborates with the Chinese authorities by enforcing 
     arbitrary and politically motivated censorship to protect its 
     financial interests.
       Our research has produced the following key findings:
       Apple proactively removes apps that allow Chinese citizens 
     to circumvent censorship, all without the need for the 
     authorities to intervene. None of the top 100 ``virtual 
     private network services'' (VPNs) in the United States App 
     Store are available in China.
       In October 2019, during the Hong Kong protests violently 
     suppressed by the police, Apple removed HKmap.live, an app 
     used by protesters to report aggressive police movements and 
     the use of tear gas.
       AppleCensorship.com counts 191 ``News'' apps currently 
     unavailable in China's App Store. The New York Times app was 
     removed in January 2017. Quartz was removed during the Hong 
     Kong protests in 2019.
       More than 26% of all apps tested were found to be 
     unavailable in China, when the average for other countries is 
     around 11% and when less than 5% of all apps that we tested 
     in the U.S. App Store were unavailable.
       A study that we conducted with Tibetan human rights groups 
     and released in June 2019 revealed that at least 29 Tibetan-
     themed apps dealing with news, religious study, tourism and 
     even games are being censored by Apple.
       In September 2021, we detected the removal of Bible and 
     Quran apps in China.
       In June 2020, Apple removed two podcast apps, Pocket Casts 
     and Castro, after the developers refused to censor content on 
     their platforms.
       Two RSS reader apps, Reeder and Fiery Feeds, were removed 
     in September 2020 for content deemed ``illegal in China''.
       Apple's censorship is not limited to China and affects all 
     countries where Apple operates:
       In November 2021, Apple's removed the ``Smart Voting'' app 
     developed by the team associated with Russian political 
     opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The app, which informed its 
     users about candidates for the Parliamentary elections and 
     their political affiliation, was removed just as polls 
     opened. Apple went further by contacting private messaging 
     app Telegram to request the removal of content (i.e. a chat 
     bot) related to Navalny's campaign. Telegram published a 
     statement condemning the move but stating it had to comply 
     with Apple in order to avoid being removed from the App 
     Store.
       In June 2021, our research on LGBTQ+ related apps revealed 
     that, out of approximately 150 LGBTQ+ apps identified, 61 
     apps were partially unavailable. China came second in terms 
     of unavailability, with 27 LGBTQ+ apps unavailable in the 
     country, just behind Saudi Arabia (28 apps unavailable) and 
     before United Arab Emirates (25 apps unavailable). In total, 
     1377 instances of LGBTQ+ app's unavailability were found in 
     152 countries (only Australia's, Canada's and US' App Store 
     contained all the tested apps).
       In addition to targeted removal, that is to say removals of 
     apps in the App Store of the requesting country, which result 
     from alleged ``legal violations'', Apple also responds to 
     governments' requests made on the basis of alleged violations 
     of Apple's own ``Platform Policy''. Such takedown requests, 
     mostly originating from authoritarian regimes like China and 
     Russia, led to approximately 30,000 removals in 175 countries 
     between January 2019 and December 2020.
       The list of compromises by Apple over the last five years 
     is not limited to censorship on

[[Page S537]]

     the App Store. For example, Apple's own podcasting app 
     remains available in China, as Apple proactively removes 
     ``sensitive'' podcasts. Although there are too many 
     compromises that threaten human rights to be fully listed 
     here, in 2021 only, Apple:
       facilitated access by the Chinese authorities to iCloud 
     data for Chinese users;
       decided not to release its new ``Private Relay'' feature in 
     China and other countries; and
       censored Chinese consumers by preventing them from 
     engraving ``sensitive'' content on their Apple products 
     (iPads or Airtags).
       Apple discloses almost no information on app removals, 
     hiding the full scope of compliance with Chinese censorship. 
     In some cases, apps' developers or publishers were not aware 
     of their app's unavailability until we contacted them. In 
     October, 2017, Senators Cruz and Leahy wrote to Apple asking 
     questions about censorship in its China App Store. In Apple's 
     response, the company admitted to having removed 674 VPNs 
     from the China App Store at the request of the Chinese 
     government. These VPNs would have allowed Chinese citizens to 
     skirt censorship restrictions.
       Apple was widely condemned after this revelation--yet five 
     years later Apple has only increased its censorship efforts 
     in China and has continued to proactively work to restrict 
     freedom of expression for its Chinese customers.
       Apple has even hosted apps on its App Store run by a China 
     Paramilitary Group (the Xinjiang Production and Construction 
     Corps) accused of participating in forced labor of Uyghurs 
     and under U.S. Magnitsky sanctions.
       Apple's so-called Transparency Reports do not reveal which 
     apps have been censored, and remain questionably vague on the 
     reasons, legal or not, behind this censorship.
       The resulting opacity has become Apple's true trademark: 
     from how it curates content on the App Store; to how it 
     implements its arbitrary ``App Store Guidelines''; to what 
     data it communicates to governments; to the deals the company 
     makes with even the most repressive regimes in the world. 
     Apple conceals almost everything about its operations.
       Apple's record-high financial results are the result of a 
     strategy that has relied significantly on Apple's alliance 
     with the Chinese authoritarian government. This alliance 
     comes with a cost. In order to do business in China, Apple 
     has abandoned its values, ethical standards, and principles. 
     Apple has actively worked to suppress the rights and freedoms 
     of their customers, even when the company was not pressured 
     to do so by Beijing. We believe that the time is overdue for 
     Apple to put a halt to such unethical and immoral behavior.
       We remain at your disposal should you have any additional 
     questions.
           With warmest regards,
     Benjamin Ismail,
       Project Director, AppleCensorship.com.
     Charlie Smith,
       Co-Founder, GreatFire.org.

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. It makes no sense to make a name for yourself 
creating secure devices for Western users but to then turn around and 
go out of your way to make the devices in the hands of the world's most 
vulnerable people less secure.
  The time has come for us as a country to decide what matters more: 
preserving this toxic entanglement with China or preserving life and 
liberty and the democratic ideals that make us so fortunate to begin 
with.
  I ask my colleagues to consider joining me and Senator Blumenthal in 
support of the Open App Markets Act to protect competition, to protect 
consumers, and to protect those basic human rights that the world's 
most powerful corporations have decided should take a backseat to 
access and profit.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.


              60th Anniversary Of The Embargo Against Cuba

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, today, February 7th, 2022, marks the 60th 
anniversary of the day the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba first 
went into effect. Just think of that--60 years. It is three 
generations, 12 Presidents, 60 sessions of Congress, six 
transformational decades ago, and dating all the way back to the middle 
of the Cold War.
  The goal of the embargo, which has been expanded multiple times, was 
unmistakable. It was to depose the Cuban Government by imposing a vast 
web of punitive sanctions designed to crush the Cuban economy and 
incite a popular uprising. In fact, to be precise, in a declassified 
April 1960 State Department memo confidently entitled ``The Decline and 
Fall of Castro,'' they said the purpose was ``denying money and 
supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about 
hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of [the] government.'' What a 
remarkable, humanitarian attitude on the part of people who had 
absolutely no idea of what history is or what might happen.
  Sixty years later, hunger and desperation are pervasive in Cuba, but 
the Cuban Government remains under the firm grip of the Communist 
Party. No opposition party has been allowed to function or to challenge 
it. Free and fair elections are as elusive as they were 60 years ago. 
Political dissent is not tolerated.
  But the U.S. embargo, which we proudly and consistently have kept, is 
opposed by every other nation in this hemisphere. In fact, it is 
opposed by every other nation in the world except Israel. In other 
words, after 60 years, we have convinced only one other government--
just one--to join us and not a single government in our own hemisphere. 
This failed attempt to isolate Cuba succeeded only in isolating 
ourselves.
  Those responsible for this administration's policy toward Cuba have 
apparently decided that, despite Candidate Biden's pledge to the 
contrary; despite the failure of the embargo to achieve any of its 
objectives, which the CIA acknowledged in a declassified report back in 
1982; despite a worsening human rights situation; and despite 
contributing to the misery of the Cuban people, whom the White House 
insists it wants to help, there is no reason to change course.
  Today, hard hit by COVID and the administration's cutoff of 
remittances and restrictions on travel by Americans to Cuba, life for 
most Cubans is an increasingly desperate struggle. Popular protests 
against the government's mishandling of the pandemic, mishandling of 
the economy, and autocratic rule have been met with a fierce crackdown, 
summary trials, and lengthy prison sentences, including for young 
people.
  I have spoken many times about the stark disconnect between the 
administration's policy toward Cuba and the reality in Cuba, so I am 
not going to repeat what I said before. I am as outraged by the 
crackdown on protesters in Cuba as anyone. Unlike many others, I have 
actually said that to Cuban authorities. No one condones acts of 
vandalism or violence, but provocations and abuse of peaceful 
protesters are inexcusable.
  I also know that trying to bludgeon the Cuban authorities into 
submission does not work. What is the proof of that? We tried it for 60 
years, and it hasn't worked. It has only made things worse. It 
emboldens the hardliners in the government who can then blame the 
United States for their own failed policies.
  They are determined to hold on to power, and if they fail at 
something, they just blame it on the United States.
  But it hurts the Cuban people, impeding their ability to obtain 
medical supplies as basic as syringes and masks to fight COVID and 
preventing small businesses from accessing U.S. products.
  I visited a lot of those small businesses. They actually want to deal 
with America, and we are cutting them off. It flies in the face of our 
belief in the power of diplomacy through engagement with countries 
whose governments we disagree with, especially a country 90 miles away 
whose people we share so much in common with.
  Sooner or later--and I hope it is sooner--the administration needs to 
face the fact that continuing Donald Trump's policy of punitive 
sanctions and vitriol has backfired. The longer they delay that day of 
reckoning, the worse it will be. And we can do better than this. We can 
defend human rights, as we should. We can stand up for the right of 
people to choose their leaders in free and fair elections, as we 
should. We could also do what we do with virtually every other 
government in the world with which we disagree: find areas of common 
purpose for the benefit of the people in both countries.
  So on this 60th anniversary of a Cold War policy of sanctions and 
isolation that has failed in every conceivable way, let's dedicate 
ourselves to a new way forward that our allies and partners in this 
hemisphere will support, that the American people support, that 
supports the Cuban people, and most importantly, that we can show the 
rest of the world it is worthy of the United States, worthy of us. What 
we are

[[Page S538]]

doing right now is not. We can do better. We must do better.
  I think of so many young people I have talked to and met in Cuba who 
want a different world and can't understand why the United States slams 
the door on them. We can do better. We have to do better. I pray we 
will do better.
  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. JOHNSON. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________