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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/29/AR2009032902460_pf.htmlBy Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 30, 2009; Page A01
Roughly a year after Fidel Castro stepped aside and handed much of the responsibility for leading Cuba to his brother Raúl, there is new momentum in Washington for rolling back the ban on most U.S. travel to the island nation and for reexamining the severe limitations on U.S.-Cuban economic exchanges.
At a Capitol Hill news conference scheduled for tomorrow, a wide array of senators and interest groups -- including Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.), Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Human Rights Watch -- will rally around a potentially historic bill to lift the travel ban.
Meanwhile, President Obama's repeated call during his White House campaign for a "new strategy" toward Cuba, along with other measures before Congress, have sparked a vigorous debate about relations between the two nations, separated by just 90 miles of ocean. Currently, the U.S. government restricts trade, money flow, investment and travel between the nations.
Some proponents of easing these sanctions see a unique pivot point in the transition from Fidel Castro's rule, while many farm-state lawmakers are eager to find an expanded outlet for their agricultural products.
But first the reformers will have to get past Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
The son of Cuban immigrants is the sole Democratic senator who has risked the goodwill of the White House and his standing within the party to press the continuation of sanctions against Havana's totalitarian regime. Menendez riled many of his colleagues earlier this month by holding up a key spending bill and blocking two of Obama's science nominees to protest a rollback of Bush administration travel and trade restrictions on Cuba to more lenient Clinton-era levels.
The bill to be unveiled tomorrow goes well beyond the measure Menendez just protested by removing all legal barriers to travel to and from Cuba for U.S. citizens, as opposed to just family-related visits.
U.S. restrictions on Cuban travel date back to 1961, and were tightened two years later when President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order blocking all trade with Cuba and, through the Treasury Department, banned travel-related transactions. The new bill was first proposed two years ago, dying in committee, but this time it has already gained 18 co-sponsors, including eight Democratic committee chairmen.
Meanwhile, new legislation was offered in the House last week to further loosen trade restrictions for agricultural products.
Lugar released a report in late February that calls for a dramatic overhaul of U.S.-Cuba policy. "Economic sanctions are a legitimate tool of U.S. foreign policy and they have sometimes achieved their aims, as in the case of apartheid in South Africa," he wrote in a letter accompanying the report. "After 47 years, however, the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of 'bringing democracy to the Cuban people,' while it may have been used as a foil by the regime to demand further sacrifices from Cuba's impoverished population."
In a lengthy speech from the Senate floor earlier this month, Menendez shot back at Lugar: "Over the years, millions of Europeans, Canadians, Mexicans, South and Central Americans, among others, have visited Cuba, invested in Cuba, spent billions of dollars, signed trade agreements and engaged politically. And what has been the result of all of that money and all of that engagement? The regime has not opened up; on the contrary, it has used resources to become more oppressive."
Fellow Democrats were surprised by the force of his defiant, public opposition to a provision that enjoys broad support in the party. Menendez also serves as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a coveted leadership post that demands a degree of party loyalty.
Some liberal donors protested doing business with a man they thought was taking an outdated stance, and some of Menendez's fellow senators questioned whether they had picked the wrong person for the DSCC job. Dodd, for instance, is a top GOP target in 2010. He has called U.S.-Cuba policy "an abject failure." Some Democrats have wondered privately how hard Menendez would work to defend his colleague.
"Anyone who knows me knows my views are both heartfelt and principled," Menendez responded. "It should be of no surprise to anyone that I have used political capital in my many years in the House and the Senate on this issue."
Menendez said he would continue to use every available tool to preserve U.S. sanctions until political conditions change in Cuba, although he attributed much of his earlier ire to the fact that the provision had been inserted with no notice into an unrelated bill.
"If you want to change Cuba policy, fine, let's duke it out," Menendez said. "Let's duke it out on the floor and let's have our debate and let's have our amendments. Let's know who's for democracy and human rights and who wants to sell their stuff no matter how many people are in prison. That's fine. At least it will be an honest discussion."
Menendez and other proponents of the current restrictions warn that free-flowing trade and tourism would only enrich the Castro regime and defuse tensions within the Cuban population -- friction that is key, they argue, to fostering political change.
Dorgan, who is the lead author of the unrestricted travel measure, said Menendez and a small, bipartisan group of House hard-liners are fighting a losing battle. "It's sort of all over but the shouting, whether our country should maintain this embargo," Dorgan said.
Menendez "has a right to take a position and assert it very strongly," Dorgan said. But, he added: "It's pretty clear to everybody that this is a failed strategy and has been a failed strategy for a long time."
One individual caught in the middle is Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, whose agency enforces the restrictions. Dorgan inserted language into an omnibus spending bill that passed Congress earlier this month that would make it easier for U.S. interests to ship cargo -- such as North Dakota's farm products -- to Cuba. Menendez and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), whose objections were more muted, voted for the spending bill, but not before extracting a written promise from Geithner that the shipping language would not lead to a loosening of travel restrictions.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Dorgan fired off separate letters to Geithner, complaining that he had overstepped his authority. The Baucus letter, co-signed by 14 mostly farm-state Democrats and Republicans, described Geithner's interpretation as "legally inaccurate."
Dorgan said he is continuing to pursue the issue with Geithner. "Nobody has an inherent right to misinterpret the law," he said.
All sides in the Cuba debate think Obama is reevaluating Cuba policy to determine whether a different approach would be more beneficial to U.S. interests and constructive in bringing about political change.
In remarks before the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami on May 23, Obama asserted, "It's time for more than tough talk that never yields results. It's time for a new strategy. There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. That's why I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island." Current U.S. policy allows U.S. citizens with immediate family in Cuba to travel to the island every third year and to send $300 per household every three months. President Bill Clinton had allowed family members to travel to Cuba every year before President George W. Bush changed that in 2004.
But on a separate CANF questionnaire, Obama wrote that, while U.S.-Cuba policy "has failed," he would "maintain the embargo as an inducement for democratic change on the Island."
At a warm-up summit to this week's meeting of the Group of 20 major nations, Vice President Biden said in Chile this weekend that the United States had no plans to scrap the Cuban trade embargo. He said that the Obama administration thinks "Cuban people should determine their own fate and they should be able to live in freedom." But he added that a "transition" was needed in U.S.-Cuba relations.
Menendez said he was open to a debate on Cuba, provided his colleagues refrain from sneaking language into unrelated bills. "A full and open discussion of the real situation in Cuba is timely," he said on the Senate floor earlier this month. "We should gather evidence, bring a wide range of voices to the table and make careful and thoughtful considerations of their implications."
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