Committee Chair Howard Berman, Ranking Minority Member Ileana Ros Lehtinen
House hearings on Cuba travel next Thursday are provoking a stir in Washington.
The reason may be found in an important Congressional Quarterly cover story which tends toward an optimistic assessment of prospects for travel legislation:
Advocates for maintaining a tight embargo minimize the support that Delahunt and Flake have gathered for their bill. For example, Claver-Carone argues that the avowed supporters of the Delahunt measure are essentially the same lawmakers who supported a 2007 amendment to a five-year reauthorization of farm programs that would have relaxed Bush's restrictions on Cuban payments for U.S. food shipments. That amendment was rejected, 182-245. "All the cosponsors of the Delahunt bill are within that 182," Claver-Carone said. "So there are no new faces."But a comparison of the names of the supporters of both measures suggests the pro-embargo crowd may be overly optimistic. While the numbers are roughly the same, Claver-Carone's claim doesn't acknowledge a number of freshman lawmakers who have signed on as cosponsors. Moreover, Flake says he has won the support of an unspecified number of lawmakers who had opposed earlier legislative bids to remove the Cuba travel restrictions. Because they don't want to advertise their change of heart, Flake said, they are not signing on as cosponsors and will quietly vote for it when it reaches the floor....
…while the president says he favors leveraging the embargo to push the Castro regime into granting Cubans additional political freedoms, he hasn't threatened to veto any legislation that would relax economic sanctions, including the Delahunt-Flake effort.
Fifty-two Democratic Representatives (and a non-voting Member from Puerto Rico) sent a letter last week to Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaiming their support, “for maintaining current United States policy toward Cuba”. This was reported in the Miami Herald as “blunting the momentum that proponents of lifting the travel ban have had under a Democratic president and Democratic-led Congress”.
The Congressional letter tries to box in the President by selective quotes. It attacks “any legislation that would seek to ease or lift sanctions” and only obliquely and misleadingly refers to the principle issue, travel:
"President Obama has demonstrated his support for the remaining sanctions by word and deed. As evidenced by his signing an extension of the Trading with the Enemy Act towards Cuba, which authorized restrictions on travel to Cuba."
In fact, his signing of the extension was "largely symbolic" according to the Journal of Commerce, and had no specific content about travel or any other aspect of the embargo. The only condition the President has publicly declared for fully lifting the embargo is the release of political prisoners.
Obama has used his own authority to permit unlimited travel and remittances by Cuban Americans (contrary to the restrictive Bush and Clinton rules preferred by most of these same letter signers), and his Administration has considered a similar executive order enabling other non-tourist travel.
While the President has not endorsed the Freedom to Travel legislation in Congress, neither has he spoken against it nor threatened a veto. He has never expressed an opinion about whether preventing broad interaction between Americans and Cubans is an appropriate and necessary component of the embargo or contradicts his commitment to dialogue and engagement as the path for overcoming conflicts. .
The weakness of the opposition to travel may be reflected by the absence in the letter of any language specifically defending travel sanctions. Virtually all of the letter signers received donations from the hard-line US-Cuba Democracy PAC. However, about the same number of Representatives who took its money did not sign. (See full list of PAC recipients here.)
The PAC currently gives more to Democrats than Republicans, but its political orientation is closer to Republican neo-conservatives and to the extremist wing of the Cuban American community that even opposed normalizing family travel:
Associated Press, Aug 21, 2007MIAMI - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the United States to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home...
...Mauricio Claver-Carone, head of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which supports full sanctions, said Obama’s statement could hurt U.S.-Cuban relations at a crucial time.
“I’m sure he’s well intentioned,” Claver-Carone said, but he added that with the death of Castro possibly approaching and the potential for change on the island, such a statement could send the wrong message.
“It entrenches the regime at this historic time,” Claver-Carone said.
John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
Links
Text of letter from anti-travel Democrats
Clippings on the US-Cuba Democracy PAC and the Republican Party available here
House Committee on International Affairs
Is it Time to Lift the Ban on Travel to Cuba?You are respectfully requested to attend the following
open hearing of the Full CommitteeDate Thursday, November 19, 2009
Time 10:00 AM
Location Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Buildingwitnesses General Barry R. McCaffrey, USA, Retired
(check Committee link for updated witness list and live streaming)