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After fifty years of isolation, President Obama announced on Wednesday to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, thereby lifting travel restrictions and trade in the hope of advancing human rights and democracy into the communist country.

“Today we are making these changes because it is the right thing to do,” Obama said in remarks from the Cabinet Room. “Today America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past, to reach for a better future for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere and for the world.”

Real Clear Politics reported administration officials described months of secret discussions this year between the United States and Cuban government representatives — talks encouraged by Pope Francis in personal letters of appeal written to Obama and President Raul Castro. The final agreement, which included a swap of three Cuban prisoners held in the United States for the freedom of an American intelligence agent held by the regime for nearly 20 years, was negotiated with help from Vatican representatives this fall, according to administration officials who spoke on background.

The move by the president received stiff bi-partisan resistance from members of Congress with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the outgoing Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, was glad Alan Gross a former USAID worker and prisoner was released, but was the price worth it.

“President Obama’s actions have vindicated the brutal behavior of the Cuban government,” he said in a statement. “There is no equivalence between an international aid worker and convicted spies who were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage against our nation. One spy was also convicted of conspiracy to murder for his role in the 1996 tragedy in which the Cuban military shot down two U.S. civilian planes, killing several American citizens. My heart goes out to the American families that lost love ones on that fateful day.”

“Trading Mr. Gross for three convicted criminals sets an extremely dangerous precedent,” he added. “It invites dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans serving overseas as bargaining chips. I fear that today’s actions will put at risk the thousands of Americans that work overseas to support civil society, advocate for access to information, provide humanitarian services, and promote democratic reforms.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with a strong Cuban community in Florida commented, “It’s absurd and it’s part of a long record of coddling dictators and tyrants that this administration has established,” Rubio said.

The administration, Rubio added, is “constantly giving unilateral concessions in exchange for nothing.”

Rubio continued, calling Obama “the single worst negotiator we have had in the White House in my lifetime.”

This announcement by the president could not have come at a better time for Cuba with the collapse of energy prices, Cuba will be hard pressed to receive favorable oil subsidies given to them by the Venezuelan government.  Venezuela has seen a sharp drop in oil prices and its currency has fallen by 30 percent and with it inflation has skyrocketed.

Cuba needed this more than the United States, as a way to revitalize their long depressed economy.

This action still is not sitting well on Capitol Hill, as many see this as another example of the president acting without working through the Congress.

In a statement released by his office on Wednesday, Rubio said he would “make every effort to block this dangerous and desperate attempt” in his capacity as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee, which he will assume once the new Congress convenes in January.

“Appeasing the Castro brothers will only cause other tyrants from Caracas to Tehran to Pyongyang to see that they can take advantage of President Obama’s naiveté during his final two years in office,” Rubio said. “As a result, America will be less safe as a result of the President’s change in policy. When America is unwilling to advocate for individual liberty and freedom of political expression 90 miles from our shores, it represents a terrible setback for the hopes of all oppressed people around the globe.”

Next will be the re-establishment of an embassy in Havana, then the beginning of economic commerce with the island nation.

Change is coming.