[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Page 21882]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 21882]]

                    CUBA POLICY AND SENATE PROCESSES

  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I wish we were here on the Senate floor 
discussing and debating the important issues that are in the Commerce-
Justice-State Appropriations bill. I strenuously object to the fact 
that we are not doing just that. This bill will not be debated on the 
floor today, or probably any day this session. In fact, we will likely 
have no opportunity to debate this bill, to offer amendments, or to 
vote on it. The plan is to wrap it up in an omnibus bill of some sort 
as the session ends.
  This is no way to legislate. This is no way to lead. This goes 
against the very basis of what our country is about. Our Government is 
based on principles of transparency and openness. Our processes are 
supposed to be open to public scrutiny and comment.
  Robert Hutchins, former President of the University of Chicago and 
one of the most esteemed American intellectuals of the 20th century, 
wrote:

       The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination 
     from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, 
     indifference, and undernourishment.

  Senators have been disenfranchised because of a distorted legislative 
process. And that means the American citizens who sent us to represent 
them have also been disenfranchised. I object to how this Congress is 
being run.
  There are many important issues that should be of concern to Senators 
in the Commerce-Justice-State Appropriations bill. I will take a few 
moments today to address one of those issues. It needs public vetting, 
even if we are being deprived of our rights to debate it and vote on 
it.
  The issue is TV Marti. This is a television station owned and 
operated by the U.S. Government. It broadcasts daily to Cuba. For more 
than a decade we beamed TV signals to Havana. The problem is that no 
one watches TV Marti. No one. And under this appropriations bill, we 
will spend another $9.5 million next year on a television station that 
no one watches. Let me explain.
  The creation of TV Marti and Radio Marti was a good idea 
conceptually. With no freedom in Cuba, the United States Government 
would beam into Cuba uncensored news about the world and about what was 
really going on inside Cuba. The Cuban people, deprived of their 
freedoms, would have a source of news.
  What has TV Marti accomplished since its creation in 1989? Has it 
penetrated the Cuban television market and provided the Cuban people 
with information that Castro wants to hide from them? The answer is a 
resounding no. Virtually nobody in Cuba has even heard of TV Marti. 
According to research commissioned by the Broadcasting Board of 
Governors, the agency that runs TV Marti, 9 out of 10 Cubans don't even 
know it exists.
  The same research by the Broadcasting Board of Governors asked over 
1,000 adults whether they had watched TV Marti in the past week. The 
answer was no one had watched. Not a single person. How many had 
watched TV Marti in the past year? One. One person out of a thousand.
  Most Cubans watch television. None watches TV Marti. There are two 
major reasons.
  First, TV Marti is on the air when Cubans are asleep. It broadcasts 
only from 3:30 in the morning until 8:00 A.M. TV Marti has to respect 
international broadcast rules which require that it not interfere with 
Cuban TV transmissions. So TV Marti can broadcast only when no Cuban 
station wants to use the same frequency. That is, it broadcasts when 
nobody watches television.
  Second, there is nothing to see. It is just snow on the screen. The 
Cuban government has effectively jammed the video portion of TV Marti 
since its inception.
  So, for $9.5 million in the coming fiscal year, $139 million over the 
last decade, another $100 million over the next decade, we ask Cubans 
to get up in the middle of the night to watch snow on a blank screen. 
This makes no sense at all.
  Last year, some changes were made in TV Marti, although they are not 
likely to result in Cuban citizens watching.
  Defenders of TV Marti contend that it is a long-term investment. They 
say that someday Fidel Castro will be gone. When that happens, we will 
want to get accurate information to the Cuban people. Defenders of TV 
Marti claim that we will save money by having TV Marti up and running 
at that point.
  I don't buy this argument. So far we have spent $139 million to have 
TV Marti in place in case Castro suddenly leaves the scene. At the rate 
of spending in this appropriations bill, we will spend more than $100 
million over the coming decade. That is, total spending of a quarter of 
a billion dollars for a contingency when Radio Marti is already 
operating and can get information to Cuban citizens. Is this cost 
effective? Hardly.
  TV Marti is a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War. We should not spend 
another $10 million to preserve a worthless skeleton. We should bury it 
once and for all this year.
  I am compelled by the events of last week in the Agricultural 
Appropriations conference to raise another aspect of our Cuba policy. 
Earlier this year, both the Senate and the House agreed, by 
overwhelmingly majorities, to end the ban on food and medicine sales to 
Cuba. The votes clearly reflected the will of the American people. Yet 
the Republican majority on this conference rejected the House and 
Senate votes and thwarted the will of the people. They agreed to 
maintain restrictions on the sale of food and medicine that make any 
significant progress virtually impossible.
  Then, to make matters worse, the Republican conferees converted 
current administrative restrictions on travel to Cuba into legal 
restrictions. The result is that the right of Americans to travel 
freely, and the right of Cuban Americans to visit family members in 
Cuba, are going to be abridged more than ever.
  This is a travesty of our democracy. How can we allow a small group 
in the Republican leadership to flaunt the overwhelming will of the 
Congress, to maintain an anachronistic, Cold War policy toward Cuba 
that harms the average Cuban and risks great danger once the transition 
from the Castro regime begins, and to abridge the rights and freedom of 
Americans? I am profoundly unhappy with this result, and I protest the 
way this legislative process is being conducted.

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