WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today released the following statement on the Biden Administration’s proposed changes to its Venezuela policy:
“The Biden Administration is conceding to the Maduro regime by easing sanctions without any concrete progress towards democratic order. This move will strengthen the Maduro regime and its criminal network, exacerbate the already horrific humanitarian crisis, and allow malign actors like Russia, Iran, Cuba, and others to continue intervening in our hemisphere, putting American lives at risk. This is especially troubling as it remains unclear whether Russia will still have a seat at the negotiating table between Maduro and Guaido while it continues its brutal attack on Ukraine.
“It’s past time we reassert American leadership in our hemisphere. The administration should reverse course and increase pressure on the Maduro regime and its enablers until the conditions are right to conduct free and fair elections, and until unjustly detained Americans and political hostages are released, and the Venezuelan people are no longer suffering. Finding solutions to the political, humanitarian, and security crises in Venezuela is crucial for the peace and stability of our hemisphere. Caving in to Maduro’s demands to remove sanctions is an incoherent and wrong path that will yield no positive results for Venezuelans or the American taxpayer.”
In September 2021, Risch wrote an op-ed in NBC on how the Biden Administration should approach the corrupt Maduro regime, including a number of actionable items to address the ongoing economic, humanitarian, and security crises in Venezuela.
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