PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE October 6, 1996 Transcript

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JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, what is your attitude toward Cuba and how Cuba should be treated?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well first of all, for the last four years, we have worked hard to put more and more pressure on the Castro government to bring about more openness and to move toward democracy.

In 1992, before I became president, Congress passed the Cuba Democracy Act, and I enforced it vigorously. We made the embargo tougher, but we increased contacts people to people with the Cubans, including direct telephone service, which was largely supported by the Cuban-American community.

Then Cuba shot down two of our planes and murdered four people in international airspace. They were completely beyond the pale of the law, and I signed the Helms-Burton legislation. Senator Dole is correct. I did give about six months before the effective date of the act before lawsuits can actually be filed, even though they're effective now and can be legally binding, because I want to change Cuba. And the United States needs help from other countries. Nobody in the world agrees with our policy on Cuba now, but this law can be used as leverage to get other countries to help us to move Cuba to democracy.

Every single country in Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean is a democracy tonight but Cuba. And if we stay firm and strong, we will be able to bring Cuba around as well.

MR. DOLE: Well that's the point I made. We have to be firm and strong, and I hope that will happen. It will happen starting next January, and maybe can happen the balance of this year. We have not been firm and strong. You look at the poor people who still live in Cuba, it's a have for drug smugglers, and we don't have a firm policy when it comes to Fidel Castro. In my view, the policy has failed.

So Congress passes a law; the president signs it like he does a lot of things, but he, like welfare reform, ``Well, I'm going to sign it, but I'm going to try to change it next year.'' In a lot of these election-year conversions, the president talking about all the drug money and all the other things, all this anti-smoking campaign, all happened in 1996. I think the people viewing out there ought to go back and take a look at the record -- when he fought a balanced-budget amendment; when he gave you that biggest tax increase in history; when he tried to take over your health care system; when he fought regulatory reform that costs the average family 6 to $7,000 a year.

This is serious business about your family. It's about your business. And in this case it's about a firmer policy with Cuba.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: There were several off-the-subject whoppers in that litany. Let me just mention Senator Dole voted for $900 billion in tax increases. His running mate, Jack Kemp, once said that Bob Dole never met a tax he didn't hike. And everybody knows, including the Wall Street Journal, hardly a friend of the Democratic Party or this administration, that the '82 tax increase he sponsored in inflation-adjusted dollars was the biggest tax increase in American history.

So we ought to at least get the facts out here on the table so we can know where to go from here.

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