Senate Approves Easing of Curbs on Cuba Travel
Campaign News | Friday, 24 October 2003
New York Times
New York Times
October 24, 2003
Senate Approves Easing of Curbs on Cuba Travel
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.
