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Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak on a War Powers Resolution that will be called up for a vote in the 5 o'clock hour, I believe, and I expect a number of other colleagues might take the floor. This is a resolution that I filed together with Senators Gallego and Schiff, and it is like other resolutions that I have filed in recent weeks to challenge the President's authority to take the United States to war without a vote of Congress.

In this instance, this resolution deals with the country of Cuba. The United States has had a long, long history with Cuba that I needn't recount here, but suffice it to say, as a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, I have never heard the suggestion that Cuba poses an imminent security threat to the United States, and I think it is an accepted fact that there is currently no war authorization passed by Congress that would authorize military actions against Cuba.

And so using the privileged provision of the War Powers Resolution, I have filed this, together with my colleagues, to say we should not be at war--we should not be engaged in hostilities with Cuba unless there is a congressional debate and vote.

My argument is that, under the terms of the resolution, we are already engaged in hostilities with Cuba because we are using American force--primarily the Coast Guard but other assets as well--to engage in a very devastating economic blockade of the nation. If anyone were doing to the United States what we are doing to Cuba, we would definitely consider it an act of war.

Let me describe what United States actions with respect to Cuba now mean to Cuban citizens. The blockade which went into effect and is using United States assets to block energy from being delivered to the island--because it does not have its own energy sources--has led to severe humanitarian crises across Cuba. Between January and March, nearly 100,000 scheduled surgical procedures were not carried out in hospitals in the country due to power limitations--power limitations brought on by the fuel blockade. More than 11,000 of these procedures were procedures that had been scheduled for children.

Hospitals in Cuba are facing a particularly severe shortage of fuel since Cuban hospitals are run by the Cuban Government and President Trump has focused on curtailing shipments of energy destined for governmental use, and that governmental use includes hospitals and other healthcare providers. There has been significant press reporting about the humanitarian impact of this energy blockade upon the healthcare sector and medical shortages in Cuba.

In addition to the canceling of hospital procedures, the shortage of energy and particularly the blocking of energy to the Cuban Government has meant the cutoff of running water in many urban areas because the water supply systems in Cuba rely upon electric pumps. More than a third of the Cuban population does not currently have access to clean water. Eighty-seven percent of the national water system's pumps rely on grid electricity to function. Trash has piled up because of lack of gas to run garbage trucks, and doctors say preventable deaths are rising as equipment fails, including the refrigeration that is necessary to maintain certain medications at appropriately low temperatures.

In Cuba, daily power cuts in urban and rural areas have been lasting between 12 and 20 hours and, in some cases, exceeding 48 to 72 hours. Cuba has experienced multiple national blackouts in the months of March and April. Cuba is a nation that is very rural, and these cuts fall particularly heavily upon rural Cuba.

In late March, the United States Coast Guard did allow a single Russian oil tanker carrying about 730,000 barrels of oil to pass through the blockade, providing Cuba with a few weeks of fuel. But in a country where the average monthly wage is about $15, gas is now nearly $40 a gallon. If you can find it, you probably can't afford it.

The blockade of energy also affects food prices. They have risen more than 13 percent. Restrictions in rural electrical supply are projected to cause a 40-percent reduction in short-cycle crop yields--crops like vegetables, beans, and potatoes. Cold chain disruption has led to significant rates of spoilage for perishable foods.

These are the kinds of things that happen when the United States decides, for no reason other than a desire to change the Cuban regime, that we will impose an energy blockade upon them. And again, if another country was doing this to the United States and causing the cancellation of medical procedures, especially for kids; the blackouts; the shutting down of municipality water supplies; and other significant challenges in the United States, we would consider it a hostility and even an act of war.

It is interesting that there has not yet been a clear justification for what the United States is doing to Cuba other than a desire to change its regime. There is no argument that they have nuclear weapons or a ballistic missile program. There is no argument that they pose an imminent threat to the United States.

Now, could we stand here and debate at some length and find some significant bipartisan support for the notion that the Cuban regime is a gross violator of human rights? I think we could. It has been a source of sadness that as the United States took some steps toward normalization of Cuba, that did not lead the Cuban Government to necessarily open up human rights or freedoms for its population. So, sure, we could have a debate about what we thought about the Cuban regime, but a desire to change the regime of another nation is not a sufficient reason for the United States to threaten and carry out military action that is devastating to the population.

So given that regime change should not be a reason for war unless it is debated upon and embraced by Congress--and if we were going to say the regime change of a bad regime is a reason for the United States to go to war, we would have an awful lot of countries in the world where we would be debating about going to war. But given that there isn't an imminent threat to the United States from Cuba, I am glad to join with my colleagues and call up this War Powers Resolution.

We just heard a powerful speech from King Charles III. We took the break to walk down to the House to hear the speech, and it was a powerful one. And one of the lines in the speech that got a lot of applause on all sides of the aisle--and I even noticed members of the President's own Cabinet standing to applaud a line--was his assertion that part of the origin of the American Declaration of Independence and the American independence project was to form a government whereby the legislature would have the power, as the article I branch, to stand up against overreaches by an Executive.

An overreaching Executive, even in matters of war, is not something that is new to the United States. It is not something that is partisan. Executives of both parties, Whigs and Federalists, before there were Democrats and Republicans, often attempted to overreach. But what the Framers put into the Constitution and that constitutional command as expressed in the statute that allows a Member of Congress to offer a war powers resolution is that when there are efforts by an Executive to go too far, then it is up to Congress to stand up and provide a check against any overreach.

Abraham Lincoln, as a Congressperson, wrote a letter to his law partner grappling with this very issue, and he said the Framers of the Constitution were very focused on reducing what he called ``Kingly oppressions.'' And he said the most Kingly of all oppressions is the tendency of Executives to distract or impoverish their populations by taking them to war. And so, for that reason, we vested the question of war with the legislature.

And so given that there are underway hostilities against Cuba that are causing significant humanitarian crises among children and others, innocent civilians in Cuba, and given that there has been no congressional authorization of these hostilities, I ask my colleagues to do what we were just urged to do by King Charles III and, in the best tradition of American Government, stand for the proposition that the legislature should provide a check against an overreaching Executive.

Please vote in the affirmative on my resolution that we should not be engaged in hostilities or war with Cuba absent a congressional debate and vote.

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