Some critics of normalizing relations with Cuba are pressing key members of Congress to block State Department spending bills until the Obama administration makes progress on extracting concessions from Cuba, according to knowledgeable GOP sources.
Those who favor the plan want the Senate to hold up the State Department’s appropriation bill this fall if the administration fails to make progress on winning concessions from the Castro government.
The push comes as Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Havana Friday for a formal opening of the U.S. embassy in Havana, and prominent Cuba dissidents huddle in Puerto Rico to re-assess their plans to fight the Castro regime as the U.S. policy landscape is shifting under their feet.
Kerry’s trip has highlighted the frustration many have with Obama’s approach to the Cuban government. After reports that Cuban authorities rounded up more than 100 dissidents on the island last weekend in advance of the U.S. embassy opening Friday, the Obama administration decided not to invite prominent critics of the Castro government to Friday’s flag-raising ceremony at the embassy.
Cuba only agreed to open the embassies after the U.S. took Cuba off its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a decision the U.S. made without Cuba having to make any concessions beyond the release of American Alan Gross and other prisoners last fall.
The administration’s approach so far has prompted human rights groups and Cuba policy experts to encourage Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and other critics of the administration’s Cuba policy to take a firmer stand. If lawmakers really want results from the State Department, they should try to hold up appropriations for the agency this fall, according to sources familiar with the effort.
Any senator can place a hold on a particular bill, and outside groups and experts are pushing them to make the bold move in the coming months.
The Senate offices of Rubio and Cruz, two GOP presidential candidates, did not respond to inquiries about the potential holds by press time.
Kerry’s planned schedule on Friday has already frustrated members and could push some to explore the defunding option. Instead of meeting with dissidents at the U.S. embassy ceremony, Kerry will meet with dissidents later in the day for a lower-profile event at the chief of mission’s residence.
Rubio this week blasted the Obama administration for “shunning” the dissidents and called it a “slap in the face to Cuba’s courageous democracy activists” and a new Obama administration “low.”
Kerry rejected that criticism during a Wednesday interview with Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo. He said a separate event is being held because there’s not enough room to hold everyone at once.
He also said the embassy event is mainly for government officials, and that the event at the chief of mission’s residence will allow meetings with a broad range of groups, including the Cuban government, Cuban Americans, Cuban artists and cultural leaders, the diplomatic corps, as well as human rights and media activists.
“I will have a chance to sit down with them at the mission. There will be a broad cross-section of Cuban society that will be invited to that event at the mission,” Kerry said. “What they are not invited to, quite openly, is the raising of the flag at the embassy itself, because that is a government-to-government moment, with very limited space by the way, which is why we are having the reception later in the day, in which we can have a cross-section of civil society, including some dissidents.”
Kerry said it’s those meetings that will eventually bring about the human rights reforms that so many are seeking in Cuba far more effectively than continuing the failed U.S. sanctions and embargo policy.
“Being there, being able to interact with the people of Cuba, will in fact help the people of Cuba. It will shed light on what is happening,” he told Telemundo.
Other State officials agreed, and said these additional contacts will help make the progress that many critics are seeking.
“In the end this is all about people,” a senior State Department official told reporters. “It’s about families that have been divided. It’s about people in Cuba and helping them and supporting them, which is what this policy’s all about.”
“I think you will see a lot of that reflected in the secretary in what he does and in his words Friday,” the official added.
Back in Washington, however, critics of the administration’s Cuba policy argue that the U.S. did not exact real concessions from Cuba before easing restrictions on travel, opening embassies and expanding some exports, and continues to seek nothing from Cuba.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, labeled Kerry’s historic trip to Cuba Friday as the next stop on his “global capitulation tour,” and called it “another example of the Obama administration’s desire to pursue deals at any cost.”
“While the Castro brothers will roll out the red carpet for Secretary Kerry, the people of Cuba will continue to be met with violence and detentions,” she said, noting that the Castro regime is trying to prevent democracy activists on the island from even reaching the U.S. embassy to protest outside of it.
“The arrest of more than 100 pro-democracy leaders just days before Kerry’s visit should provide proof enough that the Castro regime has no intention of changing, so why should our policies change?” she asked.
Ros-Lehtinen and other critics argue that while the Cuban government released longtime imprisoned American Alan Gross and number of political prisoners in Cuba in December after reaching an initial agreement to renew ties to Cuba, it has imprisoned far more dissidents in the months since.
In addition, the administration failed to secure any democratic freedoms such as electoral reform, the return of U.S. fugitives that have sought refuge on the island or compensation for the billions of dollars in property the Cuban government confiscated from American citizens and Cubans who fled the island during the revolution.
Rubio, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, is particularly infuriated over reports that the State Department played politics with the 2015 human trafficking report by upgrading Cuba’s ranking from the world’s worst offenders without proof of any substantive changes on the island.
On Wednesday, he demanded that Kerry turn over all prior drafts of the Cuba portion of the report, and the names of all State Department and White House officials who signed off on the Cuba section, and a copy of the Cuban government national action plan to combat human slavery and forced government labor.
“The decision to upgrade Cuba without substantial evidence of improvement is the worst form of politicization of an important anti-trafficking tool,” he said. “Cuba is a human slave state.”
State Department officials say there are no plans for Kerry to meet with either one of the Castro brothers during the trip. Instead, he plans to engage directly with his counterpart, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, and may hold a joint press conference with him.
Officials say Kerry and Rodriguez will discuss key concessions the U.S. is seeking, including human rights reforms, claims compensation, as well as maritime and environmental cooperation.
“So it will be a continuation of that, but also hopefully, an acceleration now that we have [a] normal diplomatic relationship, of some of the areas we have begun as well as hoping to move forward on issues like claims,” the official told reporters.
