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Congressional votes to test Bush on Cuba
Mon Jul 15, 8:13 Pm Et. Jim Lobe,Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jul 15 (IPS) - President George W. Bush faces an embarrassing
series of defeats in Congress this week that will show his hard-line policies
toward Cuba enjoy little and declining popular support, according to his
opponents.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is likely to approve as
early as Tuesday several amendments to next year's Treasury-Postal Service
Appropriations bill which, if enacted into law, would substantially ease the
42-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the Caribbean island.
Supporters of the amendments predict that a substantial majority of
lawmakers will vote to lift the ban on travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba, permit
Havana to buy U.S. food exports on credit; and possibly end limits on
remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to their families back home.
They say they even believe an amendment tabled by New York Rep. Charles
Rangel that would ban the government from using any funds to enforce the trade
embargo might narrowly pass this year. Last year, the same amendment was
defeated by only 17 votes in the 435-seat chamber.
The administration, which tightened the embargo two months ago in the wake
of former President Jimmy Carter's visit to Cuba -- the first by any former
president since the 1959 Revolution -- is holding fast.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Secretary of State Colin Powell are
expected to circulate a letter before the votes opposing the amendments and
warning that they will urge Bush to veto them if they pass both houses.
With the unstinting support of the House's far-right Republican leadership,
which refused to hold hearings on any of the amendments, the administration is
confident it can waylay the objectionable amendments even before they reach
Bush's desk.
''These will be dropped in the conference [committee] with the Senate, even
though the Senate probably opposes the embargo more than the House,'' said Geoff
Thale, a Cuba specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a
think tank and lobby group. ''The problem is that people on the other side feel
much more passionately about this.''
That is particularly true this year when Bush's brother, Jeb, runs for
re-election as governor of Florida, the state with the largest Cuban-American
population by far. Republicans are going all-out to ensure that anti-Castro
hard-liners, who are key political donors, remain squarely in the Bush camp.
''This administration is determined to pander to the right-wing exiles in
Florida,'' said Wayne Smith, who served as Washington's top diplomat in Havana
in the early 1980s. Smith, now with the Washington-based Center for
International Policy (CIP), has long argued that the long-term U.S. interests in
Cuba are served better by a policy of engagement rather than isolation and
embargo.
With the public increasingly concerned about the health of the U.S. economy
and the plunging U.S. stock market, CIP released a new study Monday that showed
that lifting the ban on U.S. nationals traveling to Cuba could boost the economy
by as much as 1.6 billion dollars a year and create up to 23,000 new jobs,
primarily in the troubled commercial airline industry.
''The economic embargo against Cuba is not only a failed policy, but it has
also cost the American economy profits and jobs,'' said Thomas Cooper, president
of Gulfstream International Airlines and a CIP board member. ''Congress should
legalize travel to Cuba, recapture the dignity of our foreign policy, and
provide a real boost to the American economy, and especially the airlines and
tourism industries.''
The CIP report, produced by the Brattle Group consulting firm, echoed
conclusions reached by another study released last month by the Cuba Policy
Foundation (CPF) and the House Cuba Working Group, a bipartisan coalition of 44
lawmakers whose aim is to lift the embargo. It found that a total lifting of the
embargo would produce, in the U.S. travel sector alone, some 555 million dollars
and 3,800 jobs after one year and 1.9 billion dollars and 11,000 jobs by the
fifth year.
''The ban on travel to Cuba is hurting the U.S. economy,'' said Ambassador
Sally Grooms Cowal, CPF's president. ''Americans wants to travel to Cuba, and a
growing bipartisan coalition in Congress supports them. It is time U.S. policy
reflects the sentiment in Congress and the will of the American people.''
Last year, the House voted 240-186 to deny funding to the Treasury
Department for purposes of enforcing the travel ban, but the effort was
sabotaged by the House Republican leadership, despite the passage of a similar
bill in the Senate.
Nonetheless, Bush during the past year has tightened travel restrictions on
Cuba. In the year 2000, the Clinton administration imposed fines on 188
travelers for violating the ban, but last year the Bush administration
quadrupled the number of fines, according to Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan.
In 2000, the fines averaged 3,000 dollars each; last year, Bush's first in
office, they averaged 7,500 dollars.
The strict enforcement is consistent with Bush's hard line toward Cuba.
After Carter, during a weeklong visit to Cuba, called for normalizing trade
relations and boosting exchanges, Bush traveled to Miami May 19 to rule out any
easing of the embargo until Cuba transforms its political system and economy.
''It's important to understand, without political reform, without economic
reform, trade with Cuba will merely enrich Fidel Castro and his cronies,'' Bush
declared.
That well-worn refrain is now being pressed again in advance of this week's
votes. The 'Weekly Standard', an influential right-wing magazine that speaks for
administration hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney 's office,
wrote last week that ''Cuba is now in deeper trouble, both economically and
politically, than at any time in the 43 years of Castro's rule.''
''With the pressure on, now is not the time to bail out Castro and his
failed regime,'' it went on. ''Yet that's precisely what a growing group of
business leaders, agricultural lobbyists and members of Congress want the United
States to do.''
''We've heard this all before, I don't know how many times,'' noted WOLA's
Thale. ''It's clear these people and the administration will do everything they
can to preserve an outmoded policy that may play well with voters in South
Florida, but doesn't make foreign policy sense to anyone.''
Cuba Embargo Opponents Seek Change
Mon Jul 15, 6:20 Pm Et. By George Gedda, Associated Press
Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - House opponents of the administration's Cuba policy are
hoping for a strong showing Tuesday on several votes designed to soften
long-standing restrictions on U.S. dealings with Cuba.
The amendment seen as having the best chance of passage would ease curbs on
American travel to Cuba. A similar measure was approved 240-186 last year.
"We ought to allow Americans to spread our culture and our values among
Cubans," Rep. Jeff Flake ( news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., said. "They
are our best ambassador."
Sally Grooms Cowal, president of the anti-embargo Cuba Policy Foundation,
agreed that easing travel curbs would help plant democratic seeds in Cuba.
"You can't underestimate the impact of a large number of Americans
visiting Cuba," she said.
The administration seems resigned to defeat on one or more of the proposed
amendments, but officials do not believe the policy will be overturned.
President Bush has said he will veto any moderation of the Cuba policy.
Flake spoke of a "glaring inconsistency" between the hard-line
administration approach to Cuba and the more flexible U.S. approach to such
countries as China and Vietnam. This policy, he said, brought positive results
with both those countries.
A senior official the administration believes the votes are coming at a time
when Cuban President Fidel Castro least deserves U.S. accommodation.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Castro has spurned a
grass-roots democracy initiative, been less than helpful in the war on terrorism
and has compared Bush to Adolf Hitler.
The House also is expected to take up amendments to lift restrictions on
remittances to Cuba and end a ban on credit sales of food to Cuba. Cash-only
sales have been legal since 2000.
A fourth amendment would prohibit the administration from using its
resources to enforce the 40-year old U.S. embargo against Cuba. Congressional
sources said this proposal, whose chief sponsor is Rep. Charles Rangel ( news,
bio, voting record), D-N.Y., is given the least chance of winning House
approval.
The amendments would be attached to an appropriations bill for the Treasury
Department and the U.S. Postal Service.
Meanwhile, a study sponsored by the anti-embargo Center for International
Policy said that if Congress legalizes travel to Cuba, it would mean an
additional $415 million bonanza for the U.S. airline industry.
The study was carried out by the Brattle Group, described as an independent
consulting organization. Brattle's Dorothy Robyn said the $415 million was a "significant
amount at a time when the airline industry is hemorrhaging red ink, laying off
workers and asking for federal loan guarantees."
Dennis Hays, a vice president at the pro-embargo Cuban-American Foundation,
dismissed the study's conclusions.
He said the number of Americans taking vacations would remain largely the
same, meaning little net gain for the airlines. The only differences would be
that Americans would be choosing Cuba as a destination instead of other vacation
options.
Hays said dollar-bearing American tourists would help ease Cuba's worsening
economic situation.
"What Flake and others want to do is give this guy (Castro) a gift,"
said Hays.
Cowal said the United States has no interest in having a failed state near
its borders, contending uncontrolled migration to the United States might flow
out of a destitute Cuba.
In addition, Cuba could turn into a haven for northbound drug traffickers,
she said, which is not the case at present because of Castro's counternarcotics
policies.
On the Net:
Center for International Policy:
http://www.ciponline.org/
Cuban-American Foundation: http://www.canfnet.org/ | 
