A group of House Democrats back from a trip to Cuba called on President Trump to drop sanctions and the blockade against the longtime communist foe, saying the economic isolation is causing suffering.
They decried the blackouts and shortages inflicted on the island nation.
“The Cuban people, who we profess to want to make sure they’re all right, are in a worse place than they’ve ever been,” said Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin at a press conference with fellow Democrats who recently traveled to Havana.
Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois denounced America’s “60-year-long imperialistic policy against Cuba, including an immoral, inexcusable, cruel blockade.”
Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon said the U.S. should be more like Cuba.
“The Cuban government has spent decades fulfilling their promise to make healthcare a human right. Every person in Cuba has access to free healthcare. Can you imagine that,” she said. “The United States should be learning from one of Cuba’s greatest achievements. Instead, we are suffocating it.”
Mr. Trump stepped up U.S. sanctions on Cuba, blocked Venezuelan oil exports, and penalized countries that trade with Cuba.
Since the revolution nearly 70 years ago, the U.S. has been at odds with the communist regime in Cuba, which housed Soviet missiles on its territory in 1962 that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
“We’ve devastated their medical system, which is probably one of the prides around the planet, especially in the Americas,” said Mr. Pocan. “We’ve made it harder for them to educate children and certainly made it harder economically for the Cuban people.”
The State Department disagreed with the Democrats’ assessment.
“The roots of Cuba’s issues remain the regime’s blatant kleptocracy and economic mismanagement,” a State Department spokesperson told The Washington Times. “U.S law explicitly allows the export of food and medicine to Cuba.”
The United States also sent another humanitarian flight to the island on Tuesday.
The spokesperson said “our tough Cuba policy” seeks “to cut the regime off from resources used to line its pockets and violently oppress the Cuban people.”
Mr. Pocan also criticized a State Department report published Monday that accused Cuba of promoting far-left ideology in the U.S.
He called it “one of the more interesting fiction works I’ve read,” suggesting the anti-Cuban views at the State Department reflect the politics of the Cuban exile community in South Florida.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba before the Castro revolution, has said President Trump wishes for a “new Cuba.”
“There’s no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime,” he said recently.
The Democrats’ pro-Cuba rhetoric is flatly rejected by Republicans who denounced the communist government for being a corrupt dictatorship.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican who is a Cuban American, has advocated for keeping pressure on the island’s leadership. She described Cuba as “the command center of 21st-century communism” and “the mother ship of evil.”
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