Byron Dorgan: “On behalf of myself, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Baucus, and Mr. Durbin, I introduce a piece of legislation today that deals with…”

“On behalf of myself, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Baucus, and Mr. Durbin, I introduce a piece of legislation today that deals with the repeal of certain travel provisions or restrictions and certain trade sanctions with respect to Cuba. Last year, in the Senate Appropriations Committee, I offered legislation dealing with removing the embargo that exists on the shipment of agriculture commodities around the world. The fact is, we have some people around the world we don't like. We say: We are going to punish you. We don't like Saddam Hussein. We say: The way to punish you is, we are going to slap an embargo on your country, and in that embargo we are going to include food and medicine. We say the same to the leaders of Libya, Cuba and North Korea. It has been my strong feeling that we ought never have an embargo on the shipment of food and medicine to anywhere in the world. With those embargoes, we shoot ourselves in the foot. When we don't sell food to those countries, other countries will sell food to them. Why on Earth would we ever want to use food as a weapon? I thought we put that behind us 20 years ago. Yet we continue to do it with respect to certain undesirable countries.”