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Ruffling the farm lobby's
feathers
A Times Editorial, published
February 28, 2005 in The
St. Petersburg Times.
Two of the capital's most powerful lobbies
are about to square off, and while not quite
reality TV, it's what passes for excitement
in Washington.
The Bush administration, always very attentive
to the anti-Castro Cuban-American lobby,
is about to tighten up on sales of agricultural
and medical goods to Cuba, one of the few
exemptions in the long-standing U.S. economic
embargo on Havana. That has outraged the
farm lobby, already not too happy with the
administration over President Bush's proposed
cuts in farm subsidies.
Congress created the exemption for food
and medicine in 2000 and, since then, U.S.
agricultural sales to Cuba have totaled
more than $762-million and Cuba has become
the United States' 25th-largest farm export
market. Now the Treasury Department proposes
to crimp that trade by requiring Cuba to
pay cash in advance. Sen. Max Baucus of
Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Finance Committee, is threatening to block
Bush's Treasury nominees until the department
backs off.
The farm lobby has the clout in Congress;
the Cuban-American lobby, clout with the
Bush administration. The trade embargo on
Cuba is a four-decade-old failure, but domestic
politics have conspired to keep it in place.
The president has succeeded in not only
preserving the embargo but tightening it,
particularly with regard to travel.
The ban on visits to Cuba is a gross infringement
of Americans' right to travel where they
wish. Maybe aggrieved wheat, meat and soybean
producers can win that right back.
[Last modified February 28, 2005, 01:04:17]
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