[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15631-15634]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             EVENTS IN CUBA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor and privilege to be 
recognized to address the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives. It was quite interesting to listen to the gentleman 
from North Dakota and the stress that they have up there; in 
particular, with regard to the pipeline being built through there.
  I would just want to reinforce the statements made by the gentleman 
from North Dakota and point out that the permits are there, the process 
is there. We have tens of thousands of miles of pipelines in the United 
States of America, and we have very, very few problems with leaks or 
other circumstances that would cause one to think that there is a safer 
way to transport oil. There is not. The safest way is with the 
pipeline.
  I am one who has actually started out in the construction business 
building pipelines. We have been in the construction business for 42 
years. We dig in the ground, and we are doing underground utility work 
every day, except for Sundays, and we go deep sometimes. We go into 
hydraulic soil from time to time. Water tables are above where we are 
working. We do well points. We are working with the flow of water in 
the soil and underground, and we have got as good a look at this as 
anybody I know.
  I would point out to those that are detractors that say: well, we can 
pollute the underground aquifer if we have a pipeline that we build and 
if that pipeline should leak. And I would point out something that they 
ought to know if they ever saw a movie of a shipwreck: oil floats on 
water. Therefore, it cannot penetrate down into the aquifer. You are 
not pumping off of the top-skimmed surface of the aquifer. You are 
pumping down below. And if you should get a leak, which is 
extraordinarily rare, the oil pools and floats on the top and can be 
pumped off.
  There is no safer way to transfer petroleum products and no more 
efficient way. It is by far the best way, which is why we have tens of 
thousands of pipelines all over this country moving all kinds of 
product, including crude oil, but also anhydrous ammonia and a number 
of other products across the country.
  I have built the pipelines. I have been down in the trench. I have 
been tossed into the air and slammed to the ground and climbed down the 
machine. The wind, the dust, the noise, the heat, the cold, has all 
been around me. What I don't understand is why anybody would take 
people seriously that think that oil doesn't float on water, or that 
there is a better way to transport oil, or that somehow if they just 
get organized and people fund them, we are going to pay attention to 
them as if they were logical. They are not.
  So that concludes my statement on the oil pipeline. I am hopeful, 
though, that in the upcoming Trump administration the future Secretary 
of State signs that permit that opens up that they need one section of 
pipe to go across the 49th parallel, Mr. Speaker, in order to 
facilitate the Keystone XL pipeline. We can build that pipeline down to 
the Canadian border from the north, and we can build the pipeline up to 
the Canadian border from the south. But what has always been short on 
the Obama administration is a Hillary Clinton or a John Kerry signature 
on the document that says: we have an

[[Page 15632]]

agreement with Canada to connect these pipelines together at our 
border. That is one section of pipe that would need to go in there.
  I believe that happens under the Trump administration. And we should 
set aside these ridiculous arguments earlier rather than later. But 
America looks ridiculous in the world if we are going to argue against 
that very logic that, if petroleum needs to move and we are going to 
use it to move product around America and heat our homes and generate 
electricity and all the things that we do, then we need to do it as 
effectively and efficiently as possibly or we will become 
noncompetitive for the rest of the country.

                              {time}  2030

  So, Mr. Speaker, I emphasize the points made by the gentleman from 
North Dakota, and I urge that the Corps of Engineers accelerate the 
operation up there, and they can commence to finish their work that 
goes across what is the reservoir and river, the Missouri River, get 
that connected and get it done. This demonstration isn't going to be 
over till you get done, so bore on through would be my advice.


                       The Death of Fidel Castro

  Mr. KING of Iowa. I made myself a promise yesterday, Mr. Speaker, 
when I stopped in to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's office to congratulate her; 
and I would do that with many of the people who are related to, from, 
or descended from folks who had to leave Cuba, especially those who are 
there today who weren't able to leave Cuba.
  We have been looking for the biological solution, which would be 
Castro being transferred into the next life. The very definition of the 
biological solution in the vernacular around this town was the eventual 
death of Fidel Castro.
  Well, it happened, finally happened, Mr. Speaker, and so I had a 
celebratory cup of Cuban coffee in the office of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. 
And now I would make this call, that it is time for the Cuban people 
and it is time for the incoming Trump administration to put together 
what amounts to the need for a regime change on the island of Cuba for 
the 11 million people that are free-spirited, hardworking, happy 
people, given all the circumstances that they have to fight against in 
the poorest country in all of the Western Hemisphere as far as their 
spirit is concerned.
  I would pass the message along. There is a wonderful, wonderful nun 
in my district named Sister Marie. She served under Mother Teresa for 
27 years. She served in Cuba for a long, long time, but she has been to 
all the--well, maybe not all, but many of the worst places in the world 
to serve the Lord and to help people.
  She used to sneak into Cuba with seeds sewn in her clothing, into the 
seams of her clothing, so that she could plant a garden, and that 
garden then could grow and prosper and help feed the Cuban people that 
were living off of their monthly supply of the ration of rice, beans, 
and sugar.
  She told me that, of all the places she has been, Cuba is the poorest 
place--$20 a month for income, but the poorest place because of their 
spirit. The spirit of their Christian faith has been so suppressed by 
Castro, who has closed so many of the churches, the cathedrals. I 
walked into a cathedral down in Cuba, and you could see that where the 
pews were, that there was dust there and there weren't tracks by the 
pews.
  But the line down through the center aisle was all polished from 
people walking down through the center aisle. And when you look at 
that, you realize the reason that there is dust out in the pews and 
there is not a path of people's feet moving back and forth down through 
the seats and the pews of this cathedral in Cuba is because that church 
does not function any longer as a church; it is functioning as a 
museum.
  Castro shut down many, many of the religious institutions throughout 
Cuba and did his best to suppress Christian faith on that island. 
Occasionally, a little chapel pops up here and there, and you can see, 
if you are looking closely, you will see a little bit of it. But he has 
been an aggressive opponent to our Christian faith, which is the 
foundation of the faith in Cuba.
  So I am not sorry to see the end of the life of Fidel Castro. And I 
have made a pact with some of my Cuban friends that one day we will 
return to Cuba and we will swim ashore at the Bay of Pigs. And that 
would be the ultimate symbolic act that, when the day comes, that it is 
possible for, let's say, Cuban exiles to come towards the shore.
  I will say, I would want to dive out of that boat and swim ashore and 
wade out onto a free Cuba. That is our pact. That is our mission. I am 
going to do my best to stay in shape to be able to accomplish that 
mission.
  Here are some things that I saw in my trip down to Cuba, Mr. Speaker, 
and I think it is important that the body here pay attention to some of 
this.
  I hear a lot of stories about how good the health care system is, 
about how good the educational system is. Well, we went to visit some 
of the educational system, Mr. Speaker, and one of them was a country 
school. They had, oh, I don't know, 15 or 18 kids sitting at desks in 
this little shack out in the country with the teacher up front looking 
like this was a country school from 150 years ago in my home State of 
Iowa.
  There, when we walked in, of course, everything stopped and the kids 
all paid attention. They didn't get to see Americans very often. I 
suppose we look a little bit different, on balance, than they do and 
their parents do.
  But we had a pretty good handful of pencils there, and that handful 
of pencils was swept up immediately. They couldn't wait to get their 
hands on pencils so that they could write. That is one of the examples 
of the shortage of supplies that are there.
  The educational system, also, we took a ride up to the top of the 
mountains about 70 kilometers from Santa Clara in Cuba. There is an 
extension college up there that teaches agriculture. This was a ride up 
there that took, oh, at least 90 minutes to get up the mountain. We 
were sitting in the back of a Russian deuce and a half that gave us a 
ride up the mountain.
  When we got there to this little campus built into the mountains, we 
had the equivalent of--we had about 40 people on this tour altogether. 
And as we were standing there, they brought out--the Cuban minders 
brought out the spokesmen for the university, and they stood there in 
their gray smocks, and the Cuban minders began transferring our 
questions to them.
  So I was asking questions of the faculty at the extension college in 
the mountains there, and as I would ask the question, then the Cuban 
minder would translate the question from English into Spanish and ask 
in Spanish a question of the representatives of the university. They 
would hear the question. They would answer in Spanish. The Cuban minder 
would interpret it back into English, and he would tell us what he 
supposedly said.
  Well, I am trying to learn the things I came there to learn, and the 
interpreter standing next to me, he was on the tour and he was not 
designed to be the interpreter, but he was the best interpreter I have 
ever had. His name was Ed Sabatini, and his parents owned real estate 
in Cuba that had been nationalized by Castro, taken away from them, and 
they had escaped from the island and lived in Miami.
  But Ed Sabatini, the son of the refugees that had gotten out of Cuba, 
he said to me, as I am listening to the responses to the questions that 
I think are being asked, he said: You realize, don't you, that these 
Castro minders are not asking the questions that you are asking, and 
when they get the answers back, they are not giving back to you the 
answers that were given to them by the faculty here at this university. 
And I said: No, I didn't realize that. Of course, I didn't understand 
enough Spanish to realize that.
  So he began to interpret this for me, and he was interpreting not 
only what was said, but he was interpreting what wasn't said, what body 
language was there, and filling me in on the things that he was soaking 
up in that encounter.

[[Page 15633]]

  So after a little while, we realized it doesn't pay for us to stand 
here and talk to these people because we are not going to get the truth 
out of them anyway. They are just putting us through this exercise. And 
so we stepped away from the group and went down and spoke to some 
students who were sitting on the curb.
  I had already asked the faculty: Do you have Internet services up 
here on the mountain? And the faculty had answered back, or at least 
through the minder: Yes, we have Internet services. So we began to talk 
to the students, and we got straighter answers.
  Well, they did have Internet service. They had a computer class going 
on right then up in a building adjacent to where we were. And so I 
asked them: So, if you want to access the Internet, how do you get to 
that Internet? Tell me how that works.
  Their answer was: Well, if we have research or a question that we 
want to get resolved, we write that question down on a piece of paper, 
and then we hand that to our instructor. Our instructor decides whether 
to approve our request or not.
  If he approves it, then that goes into a packet that goes down the 
mountain, in a Russian deuce and a half, 70 kilometers to Santa Clara, 
where the Internet connection is. It is run by Castro's people. Then 
they look at the request. They type that request out onto the Internet 
if they are approved that the question can be allowed to be asked and 
answered, and then the question goes out on the Internet. They download 
the response that they are looking for. If they approve it, they will 
take that response down and then redact the things they don't want the 
student to know, but print the document, put that document back on a 
Russian deuce and a half, and it goes 70 kilometers back up the 
mountain. It takes days or even weeks to get an answer from the 
Internet.
  I asked them: Tell me about your Internet service. Their answer was: 
Oh, yes, we have Internet service here, good access to Internet 
service. That is what it is. Give a piece of paper a ride down a 
mountain on a Russian deuce and a half 70 kilometers, going through the 
minders and through the censors and out to the Internet, back again, 
redacted, back on the deuce and a half, back up the mountain.
  Now, how long would it take you to research anything on the Internet 
if you have to process things through that means?
  It was amazing to me that anyone could even seriously suggest such a 
thing, that it was Internet access, when it had to take two rides in a 
Russian deuce and a half and go through a censor and a couple of 
minders. That is what we saw down there at that university.
  So I said: I want to go look at this computer class that is going on. 
As I headed up that way, the leader of our tour group was gathering 
people together, and I said: I am going to go look at this computer 
class up here.
  He said: We are going to leave. That meant we were supposed to jump 
in these deuce and a halfs and take our ride back down the mountain.
  I said: I am going to go up and see the computers.
  He said: Well, we are going to leave you here.
  I said: Then I will see you in Havana.
  So I thought they were bluffing, and they were, but Ed Sabatini and I 
went into that classroom, kind of down in the basement of a school 
building there, and there sat about 12 computers, all old 386s or maybe 
even earlier, and they had two or three male students all sitting in 
front of each computer. And there on the screen was the five points of 
why capitalism is bad and Marxism is good. They were teaching the 
lesson of Marxist ideology right there on the screens of those old 
computers while these students sat there sharing a screen to look at.
  When we walked in, it kind of took over the room. And once they found 
out that we were from America, the students had questions they wanted 
to ask, and they began to ask the questions. They were interpreted 
through Ed Sabatini, and then to me, and I answered them. After awhile, 
it became so rapid-fire that Ed just answered the questions and he told 
me what happened as we walked out of there.
  But they were asking questions like--and this was agriculture. I said 
extension. So they were asking questions like, let's see: Who sets the 
price on the markets for, say, grain? And they are probably thinking 
rice and sugar, maybe beans, and I am thinking corn and soybeans. Who 
sets the price?
  And we say: The market sets the price.
  Well, what is the market?
  Well, it is supply and demand. Buyers come in and they make an offer, 
and if they can buy what they want at that price, then that is the 
price. If they are getting more than they want, they lower the price. 
If they are getting less than they want, they raise the price.
  Pretty big idea. You could see them try to figure out what that 
meant.
  Then they said: How many times does the price--when does the price 
change? They were thinking that there still was some government that 
set our commodity prices, our grain prices, maybe once a month or twice 
a year or whatever they might do.
  I said to them: That price can change, actually, several times a 
minute. It is kind of a living, moving market because it reacts to the 
bids that are out there.
  Hard to think of what that means.
  Who sets--they wanted to know what are our land values, and I told 
them.
  Who set the values on land?
  Well, the buyers and the sellers set the value on land. They just 
didn't have a concept of that.
  And then it would be: Why would anyone sell land if they owned land?
  Well, there is a concept of real estate ownership that doesn't exist 
in any significant way in a Marxist economy that controls and owns 
everything.
  So we went through that. It was a fascinating time for them, and it 
was fascinating for me to see how they reacted, the inquisitiveness of 
those young students that had an opportunity to hear what it is like in 
America.
  And you heard from them: I want to go to America. I would say 
everyone in that room wanted to go to America. That is the sense of not 
only the deprivation that is there because they are on rations of rice 
and beans and sugar, but deprived, also, of ideas, the opportunity to 
have access to information, to exchange ideas. That has been crushed by 
Castro.
  So the potential of the people in Cuba, which I think is terrific, 
has been so badly damaged by the oppressing oppression of Castro, who 
threw thousands of his political enemies into prison.

                              {time}  2045

  He tortured them, he beat them, and he executed many, many of them.
  I remember, Mr. Speaker, the vision, the images that I saw on 
television back in 1959, 1960, and beyond when Castro and Che Guevara 
took over Cuba and they executed the political enemies. They took them 
up against a wall. Many of them were wearing white slacks and white 
Cuban shirts that hang outside their belt, and they were put up to the 
wall, blindfolded. They stood there with their hands tied, and they 
were shot. That was back when television showed the reality of what was 
taking place. We hadn't gotten so sensitive that when there was murder 
that was picked up on cameras, it went on television without being 
blurred out as if somehow we are too sensitive to see things like that. 
It was an awful sight.
  I recall a man who was about to be executed, one of Castro's enemies, 
and he insisted that he not be blindfolded, he insisted that he not be 
tied, and he insisted that he give the order for them to fire. So, Mr. 
Speaker, he stood in front of that execution wall in his white Cuban 
shirt, his white slacks, and his sandals. He raised his hand with no 
blindfold on him. He looked at that firing squad, he raised his hand, 
and in a moment of, I will say, just an amazing display of courage and 
nerve dropped his hand, and that firing squad fired and executed that 
probably very innocent Cuban there in front of that wall. He became one 
of thousands who were put into their graves because they were political 
opponents of the Marxist, the Communist, the dictator, the

[[Page 15634]]

tyrant that had turned Cuba into a prison island; and it has been a 
prison island ever since 1959.
  Finally, the biological solution has kicked in, and Fidel Castro is 
no more. There is one more to go, and that is Raul. The Cuban people 
need to know that when they go to their grave, their grip on the island 
of Cuba is letting go. It has got to let go, and the free spirit that 
exists within the hearts of the Cuban people needs to be released. They 
need to be freed up on that island so they can control their own 
destiny, they can live their own lives, they can become prosperous by 
their brains and the sweat of their own brow and have the opportunities 
that we have here in this country.
  This new administration needs to be about regime change in Cuba. The 
Western Hemisphere has been terrorized by the policies of Fidel Castro 
and by his support for the Marxists throughout a number of countries in 
Central and South America. That includes Nicaragua, and it includes 
Venezuela with Hugo Chavez and now his successor. It includes a number 
of other countries. Castro has engaged in trouble in Grenada and also 
over into Africa. He has fomented that kind of terror and sent his army 
out there for hire to take freedom away from other people. If we had 
been absent his influence in this hemisphere, chances are South America 
itself would be much more free than it is today. That is Castro.
  I recall visiting the Hotel Nacional. In there, when you walk inside, 
that was a place where the rich and famous from America used to play 
down in Cuba at the Hotel Nacional in Havana. It looks out across the 
sea, and there is a gun emplacement there, a cannon that sits down in a 
bunker that was used to defend the shores of Cuba back during the 
Spanish-American War--they say the Spanish-Cuban-American War--in 1898. 
There in that hotel, you will see pictures of the celebrities of the 
time: Marilyn Monroe, Stan Musial, Rocky Marciano. When you walk 
through, you see the people that I will say lived in black-and-white 
fame in America. Their pictures are on the wall in the Hotel Nacional. 
Also, there in the parking lot was the 1959 Jaguar station wagon that 
was the
vehicle of the previous dictator, Batista's, wife, who had that green 
1959 Jaguar station wagon.
  But things have stopped. They are frozen in time. The most typical 
taxicab in Havana was a 1954 Chevy, and it had a 3-cylinder Russian 
diesel engine under the hood. If you look around the island, you would 
see Russian tractors that were parked, and they had been stripped for 
parts. I didn't see any of them out there running. It is the only place 
in civilization that I know that once went from animal husbandry 
agriculture where they used beasts of burden to till the fields to 
Russian tractors when the Russians were subsidizing the Cubans, and 
then when the Soviet Union imploded, Mr. Speaker; and that ended 
Christmas Day 1991, when the Soviet Union went under and was no more. 
Over a period of time their subsidy for the island of Cuba dried up.
  They were subsidizing Cubans this way. Cubans then were producing 
sugar. The open market on sugar was 6 cents a pound. The Russians were 
sending them oil for sugar, making a trade. The sugar that was going to 
Russia was costing the Russians 51 cents worth of oil. So you have a 
more than eight times multiplier effect sugar for oil, and that profit 
that was in there was what was propping up the failed, failed, failed 
economy of Cuba.
  The Soviet Union imploded. That subsidy ended, and those Russian 
tractors broke down and finally died. So you end up with brahma oxen 
that are out there doing the tillage in the field. They would tie them 
on a piece of rope, and they would have what I called a pivot grazing 
system rather than a pivot irrigation system. I happened to plow behind 
a team of brahma oxen out there just kind of for sport. He was out in 
the field working. I asked him: Can I take a round? So I got to do that 
and got a picture of that, Mr. Speaker. That island had regressed so 
much that the tractors were parked and the animals had been put back to 
work.
  Hugo Chavez decided he would prop up the Cuban island with the wealth 
of his oil. Of course, when Chavez himself went to his Maker, 
thankfully, and the prosperity that Venezuela enjoyed collapsed around 
the failed ideology of a Marxist-controlled economy, that then shut 
down the subsidy for Cuba.
  Who should come along to save the day?
  Barack Obama, who decided he is going to open up trade with Cuba, 
establish an embassy there, and let American dollars come down into 
Cuba so the island could become prosperous again.
  We needed to let the Marxist regime finally be starved out. That was 
the purpose of the sanctions against Cuba, and that is why it has never 
been wise to open up free trade with Cuba. Now it is wise for this 
incoming Trump administration to promote regime change in Cuba. Raul 
can't last much longer. Freedom must come to the Cuban people, and I 
want to swim ashore at the Bay of Pigs and walk out on a free Cuba. I 
have done that at GTMO, but I want to do that at the Bay of Pigs, Mr. 
Speaker.
  Another way that Cuba was propped up would be any foreign currency 
that came in--tourists could come into Cuba, and they would come into 
Cuba especially from Europe. They would go to the beaches at Varadero 
and other places, and so they spent their euros there. Americans would 
sneak into Cuba by going through the Bahamas and get their passport 
punched out there and take a separate flight and fly into Cuba. They 
might also come in through the south or come in through Mexico, but 
American dollars came down.
  Now, here is the rule: we think we are helping Cubans by doing 
business with Cuba with American dollars. Here is how it was when I was 
there--and I don't think it is any different today--the exchange rate 
of the Cuban peso to the dollar was 21 pesos to the dollar. Cubans 
could earn American dollars, they could hold American dollars, but they 
can't spend American dollars unless they go to a Cuban bank where they 
have to take their American dollar, lay that down on the counter and 
get an exchange for Cuban currency. But the Cuban currency doesn't give 
them 21 pesos, which is the exchange rate for their American dollar. It 
gives them one peso for the American dollar, and 20 pesos go into 
Castro's bank account to prop up Cuba.
  That is how he is raking the vigorish out of those transactions that 
are there. Or they could go into a Dollar Store where their dollar 
would only get them a peso. That is how that money went back into the 
hands of Castro. He is raking up the foreign currency and using that to 
prop up the military, keep his prisons open, and suppress and repress 
the Cuban people.
  Mr. Speaker, we are in a place in history here where I am glad to see 
that the Trump administration understands what needs to happen in Cuba. 
I am hopeful the Cuban people have enough of that spirit left in them 
to understand what they need to do. Mourn for Fidel is not what they 
need to do, but replace him with a leader of, by, and for the Cuban 
people, and a constitution that protects the individual interest and 
rights of the Cuban people is what needs to happen.
  I fully support the effort of the free-minded and free-spirited Cuban 
people to one day also be free, all 11 million of them. Mr. Speaker, I 
will do my best to stay in shape so I can swim ashore and wade out onto 
a free Cuba.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________