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Senate Approves Easing of Curbs on Cuba Travel
October 24, 2003
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - In a firm rebuke to President Bush
over Cuba policy, the Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly
voted to ease travel restrictions on Americans seeking to
visit the island.
The 59-to-38 vote came two weeks after Mr. Bush, in a Rose
Garden ceremony, announced that he would tighten the travel
ban on Cuba in an attempt to halt illegal tourism there and
to bring more pressure on the government of Fidel Castro.
The House of Representatives has repeatedly passed
legislation to ease the travel ban, including a vote of 227
to 188 last month approving virtually identical language.
But in previous efforts, the House leadership has been able
to use back-room maneuvers to bottle it up. Thursday's vote
was the first time the Senate had acted to loosen the ban,
which is in the form of a prohibition on spending more than
a token amount of money in Cuba.
The Senate vote placed the president and Republican
Congressional leaders on a collision course, leaving an
angry White House threatening to veto an important spending
bill that contained the provision easing the travel
restrictions and a growing number of lawmakers from both
parties demanding an overhaul of the American sanctions
against Havana.
In the final dash to approve sweeping appropriations bills,
it remains uncertain whether the White House threat is a
negotiating ploy and whether supporters of looser travel
restrictions could muster a two-thirds majority to override
a veto.
The vote also highlighted a widening split between two
important Republican constituencies: farm-state
Republicans, who oppose trade sanctions in general or are
eager to increase sales to Cuba, and Cuban-American
leaders, who want to curb travel and trade to punish Mr.
Castro. The White House views Cuban-Americans as essential
to Mr. Bush's re-election prospects in Florida.
The Senate last rejected an easing of travel restrictions
in 1999, by a vote of 43 to 55. But in an indication of how
much the political and policy pendulum has swung, 13
senators who voted against easing the curbs four years ago
switched sides and voted for it on Thursday.
Several influential Republican senators voted against the
president, including John W. Warner of Virginia, the
chairman of the Armed Services Committee; and Pat Roberts
of Kansas, the chairman of the intelligence committee; as
did many conservatives from farming states, including James
M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Kay
Bailey Hutchison of Texas.
Senator Michael B. Enzi, a Wyoming Republican who
co-sponsored the amendment, criticized what he called an
American "stranglehold" on Cuba, a country of 11 million
people less than 100 miles from the United States. The
decades-old travel ban, he said, merely deepens Cubans'
misery without providing fresh ideas to the Marxist-led
nation.
"Unilateral sanctions stop not just the flow of goods, but
the flow of ideas," Mr. Enzi said. "Ideas of freedom and
democracy are the keys to positive change in any nation."
The White House countered that allowing unfettered travel
to Cuba would provide Mr. Castro's government with an
economic bonanza, allowing him to cover up his shortcomings
as a repressive dictator.
On Oct. 10, Mr. Bush defended tight restrictions, saying
American tourist dollars go to the Cuban government, which
"pays the workers a pittance in worthless pesos and keeps
the hard currency to prop up the dictator and his cronies."
"Illegal tourism perpetuates the misery of the Cuban
people," he said.
Mr. Bush pledged to step up enforcement of the travel ban,
by increasing inspections of travelers and shipments to and
from Cuba. The Department of Homeland Security immediately
announced that it would direct "intelligence and
investigative resources" to identify travelers or
businesses that circumvent the sanctions against Cuba.
The president's statement represented the first substantive
response to a mounting outcry among some Cuban exile groups
over Mr. Castro's imprisonment of about 75 Cuban dissidents
last spring.
But Mr. Bush's adherence to a hard-line policy identified
with the most conservative exile groups has increasingly
left him at odds with Congress. In 2000, lawmakers, under
pressure from the farm lobby, approved the limited sale of
food and medicines to the island; since then, Cuba has
bought $282 million in agricultural goods, according to the
U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
The Senate vote was on an amendment to the $90 billion
spending bill for the Treasury and Transportation
Departments. A senior administration official said the
president's advisers would recommend that he veto the bill
if it emerges from a House-Senate conference committee with
the amendment still in it.
Advocates of easing restrictions said they had taken steps
to prevent the travel measure from being stripped away
again in conference committee. They cited the lopsided
Senate vote supporting it.
With food and medical sales authorized on a case-by-case
basis, the travel ban is one of the last remaining pillars
of the trade embargo, which was first imposed by President
Kennedy in 1962.
Before then, Cuba's sandy beaches and Spanish colonial
architecture had made it a popular tourist spot for
Americans. In recent years, it has become so again, to the
chagrin of administration officials. As many as 25,000
Americans visited Cuba without authorization from the
Treasury Department last year, according to the U.S.-Cuba
Trade and Economic Council. About 140,000 Americans, mostly
Cuban exiles on family visits, traveled to the island
legally, the council said.
The legislation approved by the House last month and the
Senate today does not officially legalize travel to the
island. Rather, it strips the Treasury Department's Office
of Foreign Assets Control of its ability to enforce the
travel restrictions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/politics/24CUBA.html?ex=1068019960&ei=1&en=046610e20b78f519
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