Political Quotes

“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.…”