Marco Rubio

This hearing of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women's Issues will come to order.

I hope that in a future Cuba there will be a free press so that you can gather news from any sources you want.

For the first time, certainly in my time in the Senate and probably in a decade, when something is going on in Cuba now, a human rights abuse, any sort of outrage, it now is news in the United States.

Give me an example of a policy like this that you are implementing here today that has led, in the 20th or 21st century, into a reluctant tyranny becoming a democracy.

The CEO of the monopoly holding company in Cuba that owns all of these hotel rooms, the single largest conglomerate in Latin America of tourism, is not just a general in the repressive military. He is also the son-in-law of the dictator of…

The hard truth that it has not weakened the repressive apparatus of the Castro government.

I have deep reservations and in many instances direct opposition to many of the changes that we are going to review here today.

Our goal is to get dissidents out of prison, then push for the next step, and the next one after that.

I hope that in a future Cuba, you will be able to organize yourselves into political parties if you so choose.

These human rights in Cuba are very, very severe. There are human rights issues.

Can you categorically say today we will never accept that condition on our personnel?

Cuba's lead negotiator said in an interview broadcast on state television that if the United States want free movement for its diplomats in Cuba, it must stop using them to support the political opposition.

Did the negotiators reach out to you as someone in charge of the human rights portfolio?

Shifting the blame to America has worked for the Castro government.

I believe every member of this committee this morning, as I do the vast majority of Americans and policymakers, share the goals of democracy and freedom on the island of Cuba.

The Cuban people are the only people in this hemisphere that have not had a free and fair election in the last decade and a half.

I find this concerning given the fact that these are the two individuals who the administration put forward in negotiating the deal.

I thought from the beginning you were going to get scammed, and every day that goes by here, and as I listen to how these negotiations are going, I think you are getting scammed.

He views Iran as a cause, as Henry Kissinger has described it.

The answer to who is in charge, unless you dispute it, is, ultimately, who they call the supreme leader, the ayatollah.

I have been working with Senator Boxer on an agreement that would not be new sanctions.

I think Congress has to weigh in on a final deal.

The only lever in this negotiation is the congressionally imposed sanctions regime.

When a country led by a person who wants there to be a cataclysmic showdown between the Muslim and non-Muslim world has designs on a nuclear weapon, now we have cause for great concern.

We do not see any democratic reforms.