Sanctions in Venezuela

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Thank you, and I know Senator MENENDEZ is going to speak on this topic as well. We intended to come to the Senate floor and offer a unanimous consent agreement to pass sanctions in Venezuela. First of all, let me thank the White House for what they announced yesterday: sanctions against human rights violators and corrupt government officials in Venezuela who have been involved for a very long time--but especially since the 4th of February--in grotesque human rights violations against young people and all people in Venezuela.

It is a topic that is not often talked about unfortunately these days, given all the issues that are going on around the world. What is happening in Venezuela in our own hemisphere is startling.

First, you have the complete erosion of democracy which has been going on since the reign of Hugo Chavez and now with Nicolas Maduro it has gotten progressively worse. We have been seeing this and talking about this since earlier this year, when thousands of young people in Venezuela took to the streets to protest what was happening and they were met with some of the most brutal attacks we have seen in this hemisphere for quite a while. We documented that on the floor consistently.

So beginning from that moment forward, we have worked in this body to seek sanctions against those individuals, against the people responsible for those human rights violations who also happened to be, by the way, incredibly corrupt. I would go so far as to say that almost every major political figure in Venezuela today in the ruling party is corrupt. It is absolutely amazing how these individuals in charge of government in that country are systemically stealing the funds of the Venezuelan people, and the cases are extraordinary.

There are times, for example, when the President of that country--who, by the way, was elected in an illegitimate election--is benefiting from the currency exchange rate and manipulating that, top-level members of his Cabinet are skimming off the top of the country's oil company and pocketing money, and what is even more outrageous about that is that they and the people who surround them in the private sector are taking those funds and investing them and enjoying them here in the United States of America.

So I felt for a very long time--as have my colleagues--that this was an important issue that needed to be addressed, and it needed to be addressed by sanctioning those individuals and we have named many of them. So yesterday the White House announced that many of these individuals will now be denied visas to travel to the United States. In fact, just yesterday a government official from Venezuela who was headed here toward America was not able to come because of these visa sanctions.

So we are grateful for that, and we are grateful for the administrations's implementation of this. But while we are grateful for the denial of visas, it does not go far enough. We also need to sanction their assets. That is why earlier this year I, in conjunction with the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and Senators NELSON, MCCAIN, and KIRK proposed legislation to authorize both visa restrictions and also financial sanctions against these individuals, and we have been extraordinarily patient in working through the process to ensure that happens.

The ranking member of the committee, the Senator of Tennessee Mr. CORKER had initial reservations about it, and they were legitimate reservations, and as a result the chairman was kind and wise enough to hold a hearing where we heard testimony about the reality on the ground in Venezuela.

We then proceeded to vote on this in the committee, and the committee voted and approved it by a vote of 13 to 2, if I recall correctly, and that happened on May 22.

Then we patiently worked with our colleagues to try to bring this to the floor, understanding that with all the issues going on it would be difficult to schedule a rollcall vote on it, but we would try to pass it by a process in the Senate we call unanimous consent, where we ask all of our colleagues to approve it and we worked patiently to do that. While he had initial reservations earlier this week, Senator CORKER lifted those reservations and I thank him for that and the way he has taken this so seriously and his cooperation in that matter.

My intention this evening was to come to the Senate floor and ask for unanimous consent of this body to pass this resolution, but some of my colleagues expressed concern about some of the costs that are potentially embedded in this. Let me explain those costs for point of clarification. There were two, in general.

The first was a $15 million funding for a democracy program in Venezuela, which I believe is a worthy endeavor. But for purposes of overcoming those objections and getting this done, I agreed, and I think the other sponsors did as well, that we would be willing to suspend that in an effort to get this accomplished.

The second is a little bit more nebulous. The second describes administrative costs basically for identifying these assets and implementing the sanctions. The costs are not unique to this. They are not real costs in the way you and I would think of costs. You don't have to write an additional check or borrow money from China to pay for it. It is the same thing that you would have to do if the President had announced these sanctions, which he has the power to do.

What we did as a result of that is we looked at it. The total cost of it is between $6 and $8 million, even though that number is probably not that high, but it would basically involve identifying the individuals and identifying the assets they have that we could sanction. There was concern about that. We were willing to find an additional measure to sunset the implementation of these sanctions in 2016 to lower the costs even further, and yet we still heard there might be some objections. Over the last few minutes, however, and in consultation with the Senator from Oklahoma, we have tried to craft what I believe we hope we can arrive at in the next hours, a solution to this problem that assuages his concern and allows us to get this done.

So in the interest of trying to achieve it in that manner, I am going to withhold asking unanimous consent today for purposes of hopefully arriving at that agreement over the next few hours or early tomorrow morning so we can attempt to get this done in a way that achieves what we are trying to do.

This is critically important.

I point out for purposes of my point of comparison, the Senate in April approved a bill which I supported--and I am glad we did--that authorized virtually identical sanctions against human rights violators in Ukraine. That bill authorized $50 million for funds for the Democracy Program. That bill authorized $100 million in security assistance and visa and financial sanctions on human rights violators. In implementing the sanctions in the Ukrainian human rights bill, the cost was $10 million. None of those funds, by the way, were offset in the way that term is used here. There was no objection to that.

There was no objection to that. By the way, the total cost of that bill was $160 million. This bill that is before us is much more modest in its implications, and I would argue that the costs--at the end of the day, while it has what we call around here a CBO score, the costs are not real. It is basically what they would have to do anyway.

We are looking for language that assures our colleagues who are rightfully concerned about the debt and deficit but also addresses the grotesque human rights violations occurring in Venezuela today.

I will yield to the Senator from New Jersey in a moment, who has shown extraordinary leadership on this and every single issue involving democracy and human rights issues in this region and around the world.

I know there are things going on in the Middle East that are of critical importance to our country. I know there are things going on vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine that are of extraordinary importance to our country. But I hope people understand that what is happening in Venezuela matters too because even as we speak, there are millions of people in that country whose rights are being systematically violated.

Just this week the majority regime began a show trial against Mr. Leopoldo Lopez, a popular opposition leader, a mayor of one of the municipalities there. Do you know what his only crime was? Urging Venezuelans to demand a constitutional and peaceful solution to President Maduro's violent repression of demonstrations.

In case anyone needs to understand the true nature of the Venezuelan regime, it is not just human rights violations or corruption or the fact that the cronies of the Maduro administration parade up and down the streets of South Florida bragging about their ill-earned gains without consequence. Venezuela projects itself as a defender of every single human rights-violating country on the planet. Anytime there is a vote on Iran or Assad in Syria or on any human rights violation, you can count on Venezuela's Government being on the side of the human rights violator--every single time. Just recently we have seen them again repeatedly pronounce themselves in opposition to Israel and Israel's right to defend itself.

On top of everything else, we are not just sanctioning corruption and human rights violations; we are sanctioning individuals who at every opportunity they get seek to undermine the national security and the national interests of our country.

So I think this is a worthy endeavor, and my hope is that tomorrow when the Senate gets into session we can reach a conclusion on this item and achieve it. I think it would be critically important as we go into August to show that the Senate made progress in this endeavor. The House has its own version of sanctions that are different from ours. That will have to be reconciled. But I think passage of this in the next few hours will send a powerful message to the people of Venezuela that the people of America, speaking through our Senate, are firmly on their side and for their aspirations for freedom and liberty and on the side of human rights.

Madam President, I will yield the floor now for the Senator from New Jersey.

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