When the Truth Becomes an Obstacle

In Congress and in the media, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was being treated as an obstacle last week. He was telling the truth about Cuba, the land of his ancestors, but sometimes, for some people, the truth becomes an obstacle.

One news story said Menendez sent "Congress into overtime." Another story noted that his "stinging defection" threatened the Democratic leadership's ability to pass the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, which is meant to fund the federal government through September.

And yet what Menendez was doing was standing on principle against three sneaked-in foreign policy provisions that have nothing to do with funding U.S. government operations. He also was standing against a very undemocratic way of changing U.S. policy toward Cuba; there was not even an open debate on the subject.

"This body is being asked to swallow these changes in the crudest process I can imagine — without analysis, without inclusion and without debate," Menendez charged on the Senate floor last week. "Supporters of these modifications claim to be carrying them out in the hopes of fostering democratic change in Cuba, even as they do so in a way that silences democratic debate in our country."

But Menendez was not to be silenced. In his impassioned hourlong speech, the New York-born son of Cuban refugees spoke of a brutal dictatorship that has "gilded the spirit of their people over a rotten core of brutality, deprivation and fear." He spoke of Cuba's countless murders, human rights violations, young men and women forced to do hard labor against their will, and dissidents who have been beaten or sentenced to decades in prison "for the crime of thinking independent thoughts, for the crime of asking for change." He spoke of the average Cuban worker, who "lives on an income of less than a dollar a day," thanks to a 50-year-old failed revolution, which has made the Cuban people regress.

"The island was not rich in 1959," Menendez said. "Yet Cubans have fewer opportunities to get ahead than they did 50 years ago." The speech was so loaded with vivid examples of the realities of life in Cuba that it already has become a hit on YouTube ("Menendez speech on the Realities in Cuba").

Although the bill's Cuba provisions do not lift the 47-year-long U.S. trade embargo against the communist island outright, they clearly begin a process of relaxing trade and travel restrictions against the Fidel/Raul Castro regime, without proper discussion in Congress and without first getting a single human rights concession from the world's oldest dictatorship.

Amazingly, the provisions don't even call on the Cuban government to free political prisoners, hold democratic elections, stop persecuting dissidents, show some respect for human rights, or allow the Cuban people to congregate and express themselves freely.

Yet instead of condemning the House opportunists who tucked these provisions into a bill where they don't belong, instead of blasting them for their sneaky way of doing the people's business, some leftist, liberal organizations and very naive bloggers were condemning Menendez for "blocking the work that has to be done in Congress."

They saw him as an obstacle, as if telling the truth about Cuba was getting in the way of their own omnibus funding or their leftist agenda.

While Barack Obama was campaigning for president last year, he vowed to relax some of the restrictions on Cuba, yet he also pledged to use the embargo as leverage to seek democratic reforms on the island.

Menendez, swimming against the tide in his own party, was, in effect, assisting the GOP leaders wanting to torpedo the entire bill because it also includes $7.7 billion in wasteful earmark spending.

Yet Menendez courageously called on President Obama to resist signing the bill with the Cuba provisions intact.

"If the omnibus bill is signed by the president as is, he will be extending a hand, while the Castro regime maintains its ironhanded clenched fist," Menendez said, insisting that the Cuba provisions were placing the whole appropriations package in jeopardy. By not supporting the bill in the Senate, Menendez risked causing the Democrats to fall short of the 60 votes needed to advance the measure beyond a Republican filibuster.

The Cuba provisions, dishonestly jammed amid measures needed in a hurry to avoid a government shutdown, ease travel restrictions to the island by Cuban-Americans and by U.S. merchants seeking to sell food and medical supplies to Havana. A sticking point for Menendez was that the provisions also lift the current requirement that Cuba pay for food before it leaves the United States, effectively allowing the Cuban government to buy — on credit! — from U.S. food producers.

"That suggested policy change would give the Cuban regime financial credit to purchase agricultural products from the U.S.," Menendez said. He explained that Cuba already owes almost $30 billion to other world lenders and would have no dinero to repay whatever it borrowed from American farmers.

"Considering the serious economic crisis we're facing right now, we need to focus on solutions for hardworking Americans, not subsidies for a brutal dictatorship," Menendez said. "We should evaluate how to encourage the regime to allow a legitimate opening, not in terms of cell phones and hotel rooms that Cubans can't afford, but in terms of the right to organize, the right to think and speak what they believe."

Of course, for those who wanted to flush this bill through the Senate in a hurry, all this talk about Cuba became an obstacle. And instead of blaming those who sneaked Cuba into the bill, they blamed Menendez and described him as a Democratic defector.

On Tuesday, after receiving assurances from the Treasury Department that the bill's language would not impact U.S. policy toward Cuba, Menendez finally dropped his opposition to the bill. Although the details are still unclear, the senator apparently was assured that the Cuban government would not be able to buy on credit that could end up being subsidized by American taxpayers.

Nevertheless, for telling the truth about Cuba before we blindly jumped into bed with the tyrannical Castro brothers and for standing up to his fellow Democrats to defend the quest for freedom in the land of his ancestors, Menendez deserves respect and admiration.

We should have more "obstacles" like him!

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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