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Lawmakers
seek to open Cuba trade
Yahoo! News. By Jim Abrams,
Associated Press. June 21, 2007.
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers from both parties
proposed opening up agriculture exports
to Cuba and ending travel restrictions,
putting them at odds with a White House
adamantly opposed to easing a half-century-old
embargo.
"Our policy is just so wrongheaded,"
said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max
Baucus, D-Mont., who with other farm state
lawmakers has long pushed for ending the
restrictions on trade with Cuba. His proposed
legislation, he said Thursday, is "a
step toward restoring sanity to this economic
relationship."
The trade and travel embargo imposed on
Fidel Castro's government comes up almost
every year in Congress, but the bipartisan
drive to ease restrictions has never been
strong enough to overcome anti-Castro lawmakers
and White House veto threats.
"The administration opposes any weakening
of sanctions on Cuba and believes that these
measures are essential until Cuba can realize
its rightful democratic future," White
House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
Baucus was joined in his effort by House
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles
Rangel, D-N.Y., and two farm-state Republicans,
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri and Sen.
Mike Crapo of Idaho.
"The backwards American policy on
Cuba hurts our U.S. producers a whole lot
more than it hurts Fidel Castro," Emerson
said.
In 2000, during the Clinton administration,
Congress passed a law allowing cash sales
of food and agriculture products to Cuba,
and since then the United States has sold
some $1.5 billion in farm products to the
island nation. But trade has been hampered
the last two years by a Treasury Department
ruling that Cuba must make advance payments
before agriculture and medical products
can be shipped. It later allowed shipments
after third-country banks received payments.
The Baucus bill would remove prepayment
requirements, allow direct payments to U.S.
banks, provide expedited visas to Cubans
involved in buying farm products from the
United States, and lift a rule that requires
exporters to make onsite verification of
the receipt of medicines and medical equipment
sold to Cuba.
It would lift all restrictions on travel
to Cuba, which is now open to a limited
group including Cuban-Americans, religious
groups, academics and journalists.
Asked about the chances for success this
year, the lawmakers pointed to growing popular
support in the United States for easing
the embargo and President Bush's foreign
policy problems. "The president's credentials
on foreign policy are not at an all-time
high," Rangel said
Carlos Saladrigas, co-chairman of the Cuba
Study Group, a coalition of Cuban-American
business leaders, said he's glad to see
any bill that will reduce Cuba's isolation
but does not want U.S. taxpayers to subsidize
credits for the Cuban government so it can
buy U.S. products.
"Why are Cuba and North Korea the
only countries left with communist totalitarian
governments? I believe it's because they
are the two most isolated countries,"
Saladrigas said.
Joe Garcia, executive vice president of
the nonprofit NDN Network, formerly known
as the New Democratic Network, said the
bill was a political move that wouldn't
get the votes to override a presidential
veto.
"This is nothing more than the same
politicking without purpose that one group
engages in economic advantage and the other
for political purposes. Neither is looking
out for the best long-term American interests
or freedom and democracy in Cuba,"
Garcia said.
Associated Press writer Laura Wides-Munoz
in Miami contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/
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