House Shoots Down Bush on Cuban Embargo

by Jim Lobe

In a series of votes on July 23, the House voted 262-167 to lift all restrictions on travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba, 251-177 to lift all limits on the amount of money Cuban-Americans can send to relatives on the island, and by an uncontested voice vote to lift all restrictions on private financing of the sale of food and medicine to the country.

As many as one third of Republican caucus members joined the vast majority of Democrats who voted against the Bush policies, despite heavy pressure both from the administration and from the House Republican leadership, which is dominated by the party's right wing.

The Treasury-Post Service Appropriations Bill, to which the amendments are attached, must still be taken up by the Senate, where anti-embargo sentiment is probably stronger than in the House.

But the administration has made it clear that Bush will veto the bill if it includes provisions similar to those approved in the House, and lead Republicans are expected to go all out to delete the amendments before they get to the president's desk.

In a striking rebuff to recent administration charges that Cuba may be developing biological weapons, the House also rejected an administration-backed bill that would have conditioned lifting the travel ban to guarantees on the state of biological weapons in the country.

The proposal called for presidential certification that Cuba was not developing biological weapons, sharing biotechnology with terrorist states, or providing support or sanctuary to terrorists.

"A majority of members of the House of Representatives is committed to ending a 40-year failed policy, and these votes reflected that," said Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts after the votes.

The only vote that favored the administration came on an amendment proposed by New York Reps. Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano to lift the trade embargo altogether. The Republican leadership defeated it by a 204-226 vote, although Rangel noted afterward that he got three more votes than with a similar amendment last year.

"The increasing support for this amendment sends a strong message that the embargo isn't working and that it's time for the U.S. to craft a more sensible and effective policy of engagement with Cuba," he said.

Support for the embargo has fallen sharply since the mid-1990s when Congress passed the stringent Helms-Burton bill that actually tightened existing sanctions against Havana and even tried to penalize foreign companies with investments in Cuba.

The shift in sentiment has been due a number of factors, including: the weakening hold of anti-communism on U.S. political attitudes; high-profile trips to Cuba, particularly by Pope John Paul II in 1998, and former president Jimmy Carter just two months ago; greater diversity of opinion within the Cuban-American community, and growing interest by U.S. food producers in Cuba as a promising export market.

In the last years of the Bill Clinton presidency, Congress voted to lift the ban on sales of food and medicine to Cuba, although right-wingers successfully insisted that food sales be limited to cash transactions.

But since becoming president, in part due to the fervent backing of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in south Florida, Bush has moved to tighten the embargo, mainly by stricter enforcement of existing regulations.

In 2000, for example, the Clinton administration imposed fines on 188 U.S. citizens for travelling to Cuba in defiance of Treasury Department rules; last year the Bush administration quadrupled the number of fines.

And after Carter called for normalizing relations and boosting bilateral exchanges with Havana, Bush travelled to Miami to explicitly 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," he declared.

Since then, pressure on Republicans to toe the administration's harder line has, if anything increased.

It drafted Secretary of State Colin Powell and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- both of whom had voiced skepticism about the embargo -- to send a lengthy joint letter to House members charging the Castro government with "refus(ing) to cooperate with the global coalition's efforts to combat terrorism" and with "implacable hostility to the United States."

On the eve of the vote, far-right Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, dispatched a second letter to the staunchly anti-Castro, Miami Cuban-American congressman, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, in which he wrote: "I am very concerned about the intelligence I have seen suggesting that Cuba is developing biological weapons."

A similar charge by Bolton sparked a major international controversy on the eve of Carter's trip to Havana, especially after Carter himself disclosed that none of the senior Bush officials who had briefed him secretly in advance of the trip had mentioned Bolton's concerns.

Later, Powell and even Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld cast doubt on Bolton's assertions, and Bolton himself failed to attend a Senate hearing called precisely to determine the basis for his charges.

Still, no one underestimates Bush's ability to defeat the amendments, even without using his veto. Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, one of the most vehement anti-Castro leaders in the House, has in the past used his power as majority whip to persuade members of House-Senate committees to drop anti-embargo provisions in bills before they are sent to the president.

DeLay is in line to become even more powerful in the role of House majority leader if Republicans continue to control the lower chamber after the November elections.

"The action of the House is just one part of the elaborate process that takes place on appropriations bills in the legislature," noted Dennis Hays, head of the Washington office of the anti-Castro, Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).

"We will continue to work with our friends in Congress throughout this process to ensure that U.S. policy protects the security of our country's citizens and doesn't directly or indirectly support a terrorist nation only 90 miles from our shores."