On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez (D-NJ) urged President Joe Biden against returning to President Obama’s Cuba policies because they resulted in “absolutely no change inside of Cuba” but allowed the Cuban regime to “profit dramatically” from the revenues that flowed into the country.
Menendez said, “I think the president has had a time to review the actual policies under President Obama, and all of the openings that President Obama made, which were one-sided, unilateral, in terms of concessions, showed themselves to create absolutely no change inside of Cuba. The regime still arrested peaceful protesters. The regime still put political dissidents in jail. The regime still rationed the Cuban people, even as they had dollar stores bursting with food, but the Cuban people could not get access to that unless they had access to dollars. So, the regime showed no change, but what it did do is profit dramatically by the revenues that flowed into the regime. Because the regime controls all tourism and all agriculture sales inside of Cuba.”
He added, “I don’t think the administration should just return to the Obama policies, which showed themselves not to succeed in the aspirations that they had.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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