By Jim Landers / The Dallas Morning News. 06/21/2000
WASHINGTON – The Cuba trade embargo is back on the congressional agenda with a different coalition seeking to crack or break it down: farmers, businessmen and their Republican representatives.
The Senate voted Tuesday against a proposal to create a bipartisan commission to study the 38-year-old embargo. That effort was mounted by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., whose work to open contacts with Cuba represents traditional embargo foes, liberal Democrats.
But Republican-led efforts to end the embargo on food and medicine exports to Cuba are in both the Senate and the House. Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., is wrestling to get the sanctions-lifting language in an agriculture spending bill. He says he can muster a majority if his party's leaders
will let him bring it to the floor.
Until Tuesday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Sugarland, vigorously opposed it and sought to strip anti-sanctions language from an agriculture spending bill.
"We're trying to find an agreement, [and] we're about there," Mr. Hastert told The Washington Post.
An aide to Mr. DeLay said the whip still strongly favors the embargo on Cuba but would probably go along with a compromise acceptable to Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the leading congressional spokesmen for the Cuban-American community. They said their chief concern
was getting ironclad assurances that Mr. Castro's regime would not qualify for any credits or loans to purchase U.S. goods.
Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., is pursuing a similar approach in the Senate. Last year his measure passed 70-28, but it died in a House-Senate conference committee.
"A new consensus is emerging on the issue of food and medicine sanctions," Mr. Nethercutt said.
"I do not think it is philosophically consistent to oppose commercial sales of food and medicine to Cuba and yet support other more lucrative market opportunities around the world," he said during last month's House debate on normalizing trade relations with China. "Cuba will not
be able to threaten the United States with wheat they buy from American farmers."
Just four years ago, Republicans set into law an embargo against Cuba that had been a presidential foreign policy tool since the Eisenhower administration.
The party remains home to many embargo supporters. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., compared Tuesday's commission proposal in the Senate to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the study
proposal presaged a lifting of the sanctions on Cuba, which he termed unjustified because of Cuban President Fidel Castro's continued dictatorial rule.
"There is no freedom in Cuba. There is no progress," he said. "The day there is progress is the day I will take the floor to call for a road map outlining steps both countries can take toward better relations."
Those who want to lift the food and medicine sanctions say commercial sales of food and medicine help civilians without bolstering the regime.
Economic hardships this year have many U.S. farmers looking for new export markets, and vulnerable farm-state Republicans are looking for votes.
Cuba and four other nations isolated by U.S. sanctions – North Korea, Libya, Iran and Sudan – can all buy food from U.S. allies, which farm bureaus say makes the sanctions more harmful to American agricultural interests than to the targeted countries.
President Clinton relaxed the North Korea sanctions Monday after Pyongyang hosted a summit with South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung. Opponents of the food and medicine sanctions against Cuba say Mr. Clinton could lift those as well, despite the 1996 Cuba embargo law, but administration
officials have said Congress would need to demonstrate its support before the White House approves any relaxation of Cuba sanctions.
John Kavulich II, president of the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council Inc., said farm-state Republicans took the lead to end unilateral sanctions.
"The new actors are Republicans across the board," he said. "The liberal Democrats waited in the wings to see what they could do. And the Republicans brought with them the national business community."
Tuesday's Senate debate over a Cuba embargo study commission was initially co-sponsored by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who has worked with Mr. Dodd to lift food and medicine sanctions and to allow Americans to travel freely to Cuba. But Mr. Warner led the effort to kill it Tuesday because he said
it would raise the ire of the GOP congressional leadership and jeopardize the entire defense bill where it was offered as an amendment.
The amendment was defeated, 59-41. Texas Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Phil Gramm both voted to defeat the amendment.
The embargo will nonetheless get a review. The U.S. International Trade Commissionquietly launched a study of its economic consequences in April.
Mr. Nethercutt has higher expectations in the House for the food and medicine measure. He has warned House Republican leaders that the entire agriculture spending bill could get derailed unless the House has a chance to vote on his proposal.
Mr. DeLay and Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Irving, have sought to defeat the Cuba provision through the House rules process. The result has been a standoff blocking both Mr. Nethercutt's amendment and the agriculture bill.
Opponents say any relaxation of sanctions would be an unearned reward for Mr. Castro. Mr. Diaz-Balart intends to block the House from voting on the measure by saying it violates the House rules to consider it as part of a spending bill.
2000 The Dallas Morning News |